On Tuesday evening, a group of women and children with links to ISIS fighters in Syria arrived in Sydney and Melbourne.
It is the second group this month to have landed back in Australia after leaving Syria’s Al Roj Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp.
Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek said if they are accused of crimes they will be “treated with the full force of the law.”
Here’s what you need to know.
Context
Australia listed ISIS (also known as IS or Daesh) a terrorist organisation in 2005.
The group occupied one-third of Syria from 2014 to 2017, forming a ‘Caliphate’ governed under a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law.
The Australian National Imams Council (ANIC) says ISIS “does not represent Islam or the Muslim world in any way”.
ISIS lost all of its territory by 2019, and many of its fighters and their families were placed in detention camps across Syria, Libya, and Iraq. This included dozens of Australian citizens.
Australians
In 2022, the Federal Government assisted four Australian women and their 13 children to return from a Syrian camp.
At least 34 Australians remained in the camps, the majority of whom were children.
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In 2023, Save the Children Australia (STCA) unsuccessfully took the Government to court in a bid to force the repatriation of the women and children. The court ruled Australia had no legal obligation to assist because it did not control the circumstances of their detention.
Earlier this month, a group of 13 from at Al Roj IDP camp landed in Australia.
Upon their arrival, two women were arrested in Melbourne and charged with crimes against humanity committed in Syria.
Another woman was arrested in Sydney and charged with entering a declared conflict zone and joining ISIS.
Latest
On Tuesday night, the NSW and Victoria police released a statement
announcing six more women and their children had arrived inSydney and Melbourne.
Four women and their children arrived in Sydney, while two women and their children landed in Melbourne.
None of the women were charged, but police said the investigations are ongoing.
“The cohort was subject to a range of operational responses, including the searching of belongings and the downloading of their devices for investigative purposes.”
– A statement released by the NSWand Victoria Joint Counter Terrorism Teams.
