SYDNEY
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday his government would not help Australians in a Syrian camp holding families of suspected Islamic State (ISIS) extremists return home, with the government open to prosecutions if they make it back.
“We have a very firm view that we won’t be providing assistance or repatriation,” Albanese told ABC News.
Thirty-four Australians released on Monday from a camp in northern Syria were returned to the detention centre due to “technical reasons,” sources told Reuters on Monday.
Dubbed “ISIS brides” by local media, though the cohort also includes children, they are expected to travel to Damascus before eventually returning to Australia, despite objection from Australian ruling and opposition lawmakers.
A spokesman for Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Australia’s security agencies had been monitoring the situation in Syria, and said those who had broken the law would be prosecuted.
“People in this cohort need to know that if they have committed a crime and if they return to Australia they will be met with the full force of the law,” he said.
Islamic State (ISIS) is a listed terror organisation in Australia, with membership of the group punishable by up to 25 years in prison. Australia also has the power to strip dual nationals of citizenship if they are an ISIS member.
The return of relatives of suspected ISIS militants is a political issue in Australia, that has seen a surge in popularity of the right wing, anti-immigration One Nation party led by Pauline Hanson.
“They hate Westerners, and that’s what it’s all about. You say there’s great Muslims out there, well I’m sorry, how can you tell me there are good Muslims?” Hanson said in an interview on Sky News on Monday, following news of the suspected ISIS family members return.
The comments were criticised by members of Hanson’s own party.
A poll this week found One Nation’s share of the popular vote at a record high of 26 percent, above the combined support for the traditional centre-right coalition currently in opposition.
Sarah Henderson, a senator in the Liberal party that has seen its vote eroded by One Nation, said on Tuesday that Australians with sympathies towards ISIS should be barred from re-entering the country.
“If these are people who subscribed to ISIS ideology, who subscribe to this extremist ideology, then they should not be returning to Australia,” she told ABC.
Australian citizens have a legal right to enter the country under both local and international law.
Hukmiya Mohamed, a co-director of Roj camp, told Reuters that the 34 Australians had been handed to members of their families who had come to Syria for the release. They were put on small buses for Damascus ahead of their departure from the country with a military escort.
However, the Australian families returned to Roj camp shortly after leaving, the sources said, due to “technical problems” between the families and the Damascus government.
The sources said that the families will head back to Damascus later on Monday.
“It’s purely a procedural issue to be resolved today,” a Syrian official said.
Roj camp holds more than 2,000 people from 40 different nationalities, the majority of them women and children.
Thousands of people believed to be linked to ISIS have been held at Roj and a second camp, al-Hol, since the jihadist group was driven from its final territorial foothold in Syria in 2019.
Syrian government forces seized swathes of northern Syria from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in January, before agreeing a ceasefire on January 29. The US military last week completed a mission to transfer 5,700 adult male ISIS detainees from Syria to Iraq.
Mohamed said the Syrian Kurdish-led authorities had previously facilitated numerous releases from Roj, via coordination with foreign governments.
Roj camp is where British-born Shamima Begum is held. The British government took away her citizenship on national security grounds in 2019.
“Shamima Begum’s situation is the same as that of all the women in Roj camp … If her country wants her back, our doors are open,” Mohamed said.