Members of the family 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 dwelling from a detention camp in Syria, the most recent 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, House Affairs Minister Tony Burke mentioned Wednesday.
However the group was turned again by Syrian authorities to the Roj detention camp, resulting from unspecified procedural issues.
The Australian authorities had acted on information that the group deliberate to depart Syria, Burke mentioned. He mentioned the lady, 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 usually blamed the dad and mom for the predicaments of their offspring stranded in Syria.
“These are horrific situations that have been brought on those children by actions of their parents. They are terrible situations. But they have been brought on entirely by horrific decisions that their parents made,” Burke instructed Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Burke has the ability to make use of momentary exclusion orders to forestall 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 forestall defeated Islamic State fighters from returning to Australia. There aren’t any public stories of an order being issued earlier than.
Burke mentioned safety businesses had not suggested that any of the opposite Australians within the group warranted an exclusion order. Such orders cannot be made towards kids youthful than 14.
Complicated messages at a cramped camp
Members of the family of suspected Islamic State militants who’re Australian nationals stroll towards a van certain 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 dwelling refused to talk to The Related Press on Wednesday.
One of many ladies, Zeinab Ahmad, mentioned that they had been suggested by an lawyer to not discuss 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 have no contact with the Australian government regarding this matter, as we are not part of the process,” she mentioned. “We have left it to the families 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 disappointed” upon returning to the camp, she mentioned.
“We recently requested that all countries and families come and take back their citizens,” Rojava mentioned.
She added that Syrian authorities don’t need to see a “repeat of what happened in al-Hol camp” — a a lot bigger camp, additionally in northeastern Syria that after housed tens of hundreds of individuals, largely ladies and kids, with alleged ties to IS.
Final month, throughout combating between Syrian authorities forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which had managed al-Hol, guards deserted their posts and most of the camp’s residents fled.
That raised considerations 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 drive stays answerable for Roj camp and a ceasefire is now in place.
The thorny difficulty 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 most recent group.
“These are people who chose to go overseas to align themselves with an ideology which is the caliphate, which is a brutal, reactionary ideology and that seeks to undermine and destroy our way of life,” Albanese instructed 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. Through the years, that they had households and raised kids there.
“We are doing nothing to repatriate or to assist these people. I think it’s unfortunate that children are caught up in this, that’s not their decision, but it’s the decision of their parents or their mother,” Albanese added.
