Islamic State-linked families stuck because of Australia’s refusal: Syrian officials

Beirut: A group of Australian women and children who left a camp in Syria that houses people with alleged ties to Islamic State group militants are stuck in the country because Australian authorities have refused to allow their return, Syrian officials said on Wednesday.

Thirteen women and children from four families last week left Roj camp, a remote facility near the border with Iraq that houses relatives of suspected militants, on Friday and headed to Syria’s capital.

An official at the camp at the time said that the families were expected to remain in Damascus for around 72 hours and then be sent to Australia. However, Syria’s information ministry said in a statement that after the families left the camp, the foreign ministry was informed that “the Australian government had refused to receive them”.

They were turned back before reaching Damascus International Airport, the information ministry’s statement said.

The office of Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has been contacted for comment.

This masthead revealed on Monday that the cohort had acquired plane tickets to make their return to Australia, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese refused to provide further detail on.

Addressing a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra on Monday, Albanese reiterated the government had not assisted the group, and said parents in the cohort had made their children the victims of their “evil choices”.

While their repatriation remains in flux, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said this week that the cohort may face arrest if they return to Australia. “If they do come home, they will face the full force of the law,” Wong said.

US state officials have condemned Australia’s reluctance to repatriates the families, as the nation embroiled in an ongoing war with Iran seeks to close war camps in Syria.

In a letter from a US Department of State official, seen by this masthead, a policy analyst said the United States wanted to “press countries to repatriate, especially in light of recent developments in the region”.

“I see that the Australian government has dug in on its opposition to repatriating them from the camp … I can only imagine how frustrating their return to Roj is,” the official wrote in a February email written the last time the group pushed to return to Australia.

Opposition Home Affairs spokesman Jonathon Duniam once again demanded the government stop the cohort – which he described as “a danger to our community” – from returning.

“How is it that another foreign government could be making decisions for Australia? It shows that this government is not willing to make the hard decisions,” Duniam told this masthead.

In its statement to the Associated Press on Thursday, the Syrian ministry said a solution for the families can “only be achieved through coordination with the relevant international parties”.

The ministry said that the families, through a lawyer, had obtained passports that were delivered by an “individual” that it didn’t identify while they were still in northeastern Syria in an area under the control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.

A Lebanese-Australian doctor, Jamal Rifi, previously told Australian media that he was helping to coordinate the repatriation effort. Rifi couldn’t be reached for comment.

A previous attempt to return 34 women and children to Australia from the camp in February was turned back by Syrian authorities.

Former IS fighters from multiple countries, along with their wives and children, were held in a network of camps and detention centres in northeast Syria after the militant group lost control of its territory in Syria in 2019. Though defeated, the group still has sleeper cells that carry out deadly attacks in Syria and Iraq.

The larger al-Hol camp has now been closed down, and thousands of suspected IS militants previously held in Syria were transferred to Iraq by the US military to stand trial there.

The moves came after fighting between government forces and the SDF in January. Government forces seized much of the territory formerly held by the SDF. Amid the chaos, many detainees fled al-Hol and some prisoners escaped from a detention centre.

Australian governments have repatriated Australian women and children from Syrian detention camps on two occasions. Other Australians have also returned without government assistance.

AP

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