Listen to this article
Estimated 4 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
Airliners carrying 13 Australian women and children with alleged ties to the Islamic State group landed on Thursday in their homeland, where the adults face potential criminal charges relating to their alleged time in the extremist organization’s so-called caliphate, which spanned Syria and Iraq.
The Australian government announced on Wednesday that the women and children, who have spent years in a Syrian desert camp, planned to return to Australia, and two Qatar Airways flights took off minutes apart from Doha on Thursday.
The first plane, carrying three Australian women and eight children, landed in Melbourne, while a separate plane carrying a woman and her son arrived in Sydney soon after.
The woman who landed in Sydney was seen being taken by police to a local station. Australian Federal Police are expected to address reporters later on Thursday regarding the women’s reception at both airports.
The Australian government had condemned the women for supporting Islamic State militants by travelling to Syria and had refused to help repatriate them.
Police have been investigating for more than a decade Australians’ potential involvement in atrocities while in Syria, including terrorism offences and crimes against humanity, such as slave trading.
Deakin University extremism expert Joshua Roose said Australian authorities were investigating abuses within the caliphate, including enslaving Yazidi women and harsh policing of sharia law.
“Some of the worst forms of violence were in fact enacted by women, so we need to understand that it’s a problem,” Roose told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Women ready to face arrest in Australia
ABC reporter Bridget Rollason, who was on the Melbourne flight from Doha, said some of the women told her they spent as long as 12 years in Syria, with children born in hellish conditions inside the camps.
“When I did actually ask them about the prospect of facing arrest, they actually told me that they were willing to take the hit, they said, for their children, because they want to bring their children back to Australia,” Rollason said.
“One of the woman I spoke to said that what she missed the most was coffee. She said she couldn’t wait to get to Little Collins Street in Melbourne to have a coffee again.”
Under Australian law, it was an offence punishable by up to 10 years in prison to travel to the former Islamic State group stronghold of Raqqa, Syria, without a legitimate reason from 2014 to 2017.
A previous attempt to return 34 women and children to Australia from the same camp in February was turned back by Syrian authorities.
On that occasion, Australia’s government banned one of the women from returning.
The woman, who officials did not identify, had been issued a temporary exclusion order, which Australia can use to prevent high-risk citizens from returning for up to two years.
Aid agency pushes for children’s welfare
The orders were created by laws introduced in 2019 to prevent defeated Islamic State fighters from returning to Australia.
That woman is still banned from Australia by the order and did not return on Thursday. Opposition lawmakers had urged the government to make the same orders against the four newly returned women before they boarded their flights.
Such orders can’t be made against children younger than 14. Australia has ruled out separating mothers from children who want to return from Syria.
The aid agency Save the Children failed in a court bid in 2024 to compel the Australian government to repatriate citizens from Syrian camps.
Save the Children Australia chief executive Mat Tinkler said Australian authorities now had to give priority to the returned children’s welfare.
“Two-thirds of this cohort that we’re talking about … are children,” Tinkler said. “We need the focus now to be on these children and give them a chance of resuming a normal life here in Australia.”
Australian governments have repatriated Australian women and children from Syrian detention camps on two occasions. Other Australians have returned without government assistance.
