Relations of suspected Islamic State militants who’re Australian nationals board a van heading to the airport in Damascus in the course of the first repatriation operation of the 12 months, at Roj Camp in japanese Syria, Monday, Feb. 16, 2026. Thirty-four Australian residents from 11 households departed the camp.
Baderkhan Ahmad/AP/AP
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Baderkhan Ahmad/AP/AP
MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia’s authorities banned an Australian citizen with alleged ties to the militant Islamic State group from returning house from a detention camp in Syria, the newest improvement within the case of fraught repatriation of households of IS fighters.
The girl was planning to affix one other 33 Australians — 10 ladies and 23 kids — and fly on Monday from Damascus, Syria, to Australia, Dwelling Affairs Minister Tony Burke mentioned Wednesday.
However the group was turned again by Syrian authorities to the Roj detention camp, on account of unspecified procedural issues.
The Australian authorities had acted on information that the group deliberate to go away Syria, Burke mentioned. He mentioned the girl, whom he didn’t establish, had been issued with a short lived exclusion order on Monday and her attorneys had been supplied with the paperwork on Wednesday.
She was an immigrant who left Australia for Syria someday between 2013 and 2015, Burke mentioned, declining to elaborate on whether or not she had kids — although he typically blamed the dad and mom for the predicaments of their offspring stranded in Syria.
“These are horrific conditions which were introduced on these kids by actions of their dad and mom. They’re horrible conditions. However they’ve been introduced on fully by horrific choices that their dad and mom made,” Burke informed Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Burke has the facility to make use of momentary exclusion orders to stop high-risk residents from returning to Australia for as much as two years.
The legal guidelines have been have been launched to in 2019 to stop defeated Islamic State fighters from returning to Australia. There are not any public experiences of an order being issued earlier than.
Burke mentioned safety companies had not suggested that any of the opposite Australians within the group warranted an exclusion order. Such orders cannot be made in opposition to kids youthful than 14.
Complicated messages at a cramped camp
Relations of suspected Islamic State militants who’re Australian nationals stroll towards a van sure for the airport in Damascus in the course of the first repatriation operation of the 12 months at Roj Camp in japanese Syria, Monday, Feb. 16, 2026. Thirty-four Australian residents from 11 households departed the camp.
Baderkhan Ahmad/AP/AP
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Baderkhan Ahmad/AP/AP
On the Roj camp, tucked in Syria’s northeastern nook close to the border with Iraq, the Australian ladies who had anticipated to journey house refused to talk to The Related Press on Wednesday.
One of many ladies, Zeinab Ahmad, mentioned they’d been suggested by an legal professional to not speak to journalists.
A safety official on the camp, Chavrê Rojava, mentioned that relations of the detainees — who she mentioned have been Australians of Lebanese origin — had traveled to Syria to rearrange their return. They introduced momentary passports that had been issued for the would-be returnees, Rojava mentioned.
“We’ve got no contact with the Australian authorities relating to this matter, as we aren’t a part of the method,” she mentioned. “We’ve got left it to the households to resolve.”
Rojava mentioned that after the group had departed the camp to journey to Damascus, they have been contacted by a Syrian authorities official and warned to show again. The households have been “very upset” upon returning to the camp, she mentioned.
“We lately requested that each one nations and households come and take again their residents,” Rojava mentioned.
She added that Syrian authorities don’t wish to see a “repeat of what occurred in al-Hol camp” — a a lot bigger camp, additionally in northeastern Syria that when housed tens of hundreds of individuals, principally ladies and kids, with alleged ties to IS.
Final month, throughout preventing between Syrian authorities forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which had managed al-Hol, guards deserted their posts and lots of the camp’s residents fled.
That raised issues that IS members would regroup and stage new assaults in Syria.
The Syrian authorities then established management of al-Hol and has begun transferring its remaining residents to a different camp in Aleppo province. The Kurdish-led pressure stays accountable for Roj camp and a ceasefire is now in place.
The thorny subject of repatriating IS-linked overseas residents
Former Islamic State fighters from a number of nations, their wives and kids have been detained in camps for the reason that militant group misplaced management of its territory in Syria in 2019. Although defeated, the group nonetheless has sleeper cells that perform lethal assaults in each Syria and Iraq.
Australian governments have repatriated Australian ladies and kids from Syrian detention camps on two events. Different Australians have additionally returned with out authorities help.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday reiterated his place introduced a day earlier that his authorities wouldn’t assist repatriate the newest group.
“These are individuals who selected to go abroad to align themselves with an ideology which is the caliphate, which is a brutal, reactionary ideology and that seeks to undermine and destroy our lifestyle,” Albanese informed reporters.
He was referring to the militants’ seize of broad swaths of land greater than a decade in the past that stretched throughout Syria and Iraq, territory the place IS established its so-called caliphate. Jihadis from overseas nations traveled to Syria on the time to affix the IS. Over time, they’d households and raised kids there.
“We’re doing nothing to repatriate or to help these individuals. I believe it is unlucky that kids are caught up on this, that is not their choice, however it’s the choice of their dad and mom or their mom,” Albanese added.
