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Australian federal police are ready to arrest multiple women with links to Islamic State when they arrive in Australia on Thursday, in a dramatic end to the families’ tumultuous efforts to flee dire conditions in a camp in north-east Syria.
Four women and nine children are expected to touch down on Thursday evening in Sydney and Melbourne, travelling via Doha, with police waiting for their arrival at the airport.
Sources familiar with the group’s travel plans said former health science student Janai Safar and her child were expected to arrive in Sydney, where the mother faces likely arrest.
Safar, 32, left Australia in 2015 to travel to Islamic State-occupied Syria. She was married to an Islamic State fighter who is believed to have died in 2017.
Grandmother Kawsar Abbas is expected to fly to Melbourne with her adult daughters Zeinab and Zahra Ahmed, and their eight children.
This masthead reported last month that the group of 13 women and children had plane tickets to Australia and hoped to leave Damascus within days.
Their planned arrival follows a failed attempt by the group to return home in February before they were turned around by local authorities.
Their bid to return to Australia has been politically contentious, with the Coalition demanding the Albanese government block the women from entering the country and US officials expressing frustration at Australia’s reluctance to take back its citizens.
The Albanese government organised a repatriation mission for four Australian women and 13 children from Syria in October 2022, but the political blowback convinced the government not to authorise any such missions again.
Burke stressed on Wednesday that the government was “not assisting and will not assist these individuals”.
A source close to the process said the Syrian government has been heavily involved in the travel plans, including transporting the group from al-Roj camp in the north-east of Syria, holding them while they were in Damascus and organising their flights back to Australia.
The source said there had been a “total information blackout” since the group left the camp, and even their families were unaware of their wellbeing and status.
Burke said Australia’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies had been preparing for their return since 2014, “and have long-standing plans in place to manage and monitor them”.
“These are people who have made the horrific choice to join a dangerous terrorist organisation and to place their children in an unspeakable situation,” Burke said. “As we have said many times, any members of this cohort who have committed crimes can expect to face the full force of the law.”
Speaking at a press conference in Canberra, Barrett said police had been investigating since 2015 whether the Australians who travelled to Syria “may have committed Commonwealth offences, including terrorism offences”.
“Some individuals will be arrested and charged,” Barrett said.
“Some will face continued investigations when they arrive in Australia, and children who return in the cohort will be asked to undergo community integration programs, therapeutic support and countering violent extremism programs.”
Barrett said she was unable to say how many of the women would be arrested.
Police inspectors made several trips to Syria, including in times of danger, to establish whether criminal charges could be laid against Australians in the camps, she said.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush said his officers would work with the AFP to monitor those returning to Victoria, while NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley said police would “have a role” in managing the return of the two people in Sydney.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan echoed Burke’s comments about the adults facing potential charges, and said the returning children would be asked to complete programs designed to counter violent extremism.
ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess said he was not concerned by the return of the families but added his agency would continue to monitor them.
“It’s up to them what they do when they get here. If they start to exhibit signs of concern, we and the police, through the joint counter-terrorism teams, will take action,” Burgess said.
Zahra Ahmed, one of the women expected to return to Australia, previously told this masthead that her extended family left their home in Melbourne’s outer suburbs to do humanitarian work. She said they were abruptly prevented from leaving Syria when Islamic State closed the borders of its self-proclaimed caliphate.
While men in her family reportedly joined Islamic State, Ahmed insisted the women had no choice but to follow.
The group has been held in camps since the fall of Islamic State and the death or capture of their husbands and fathers, who allegedly fought for the terrorist network.
Save the Children chief executive Mat Tinkler, who has lobbied for the government to help return the women and children, said it was better for some of the group to face criminal charges than languish in Syria.
“The reality is they are coming back … it’s going to happen,” he said. “We need to turn the temperature down.”
He said that two-thirds of the Australians remaining in the camp were children who did not decide to leave Australia and were suffering untreated shrapnel wounds and teeth falling out.
Labor cabinet minister Anne Aly, a former terrorism and deradicalisation expert, expressed little sympathy for the returning women, saying it would have been “very, very difficult for any individual” to travel into Syria a decade ago.
“There were laws enacted to make it unlawful. There were travel warnings at the time,” she said.
“That indicates, then, that anyone who went there at that time went there with a nefarious purpose, with a commitment to the ISIS agenda of establishing a caliphate by violent means. I think that is a very serious situation that needs to be considered when we undertake threat assessments.”
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Matthew Knott is the foreign affairs and national security correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X, Facebook or email.
Mostafa Rachwani is a Parramatta reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously the Community Affairs reporter at Guardian Australia.Connect via email.From our partners
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