A group of so-called ISIS brides who left the notorious al-Roj camp in Syria last week have spent their first night home in Australia.
Two flights carrying women and children linked to the Islamic State group landed in Melbourne and Sydney yesterday afternoon.
A plane believed to be carrying a number of ISIS-linked women and children arrives at Melbourne Airport yesterday afternoon. (ABC News)
At Melbourne Airport, two women and seven children, including one person who recently turned 18, touched down just after 4:30pm. The women have been confirmed as Kirsty Rosse-Emile and Kawsar Kanj.
Four women and six children landed in Sydney about an hour later.
The ABC has confirmed the women are Aminah Zahab, her daughter Sumaya Zahab and niece Nesrine Zahab, along with Hyam Raad. The women and their children were taken into the care of NSW Department of Communities and Justice.
Another woman, Hodan Abby, has been barred from returning after being given a temporary exclusion order (TEO) under Australian counterterrorism laws and remains in the Middle East. The ABC understands her child, who is not covered by the TEO, has elected to stay with her.
A large group left the al-Roj camp in northern Syria last week, with most understood to have boarded flights from Qatar.
Sydney doctor Jamal Rifi, who campaigned for Australians in the camps to return home, said he believed some of the women had been “tricked” into going to Syria.
The AFP confirmed four women and their children landed at Sydney International Airport late yesterday afternoon. (ABC News)
“It’s a terrible decision. Some of these women, I believe they were tricked to go there,” told ABC’s 7.30 program.
“Some of them are victims of the ‘death cult’ and others have not willingly [gone] there.
“The details of that are only known to security agencies and not to us.”
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) said the group’s belongings were searched and their devices downloaded as part of “operational responses”.
No-one was arrested or charged, however the AFP said investigations into the activities of Australians who had travelled to Syria and returned were ongoing.
In Melbourne, it appeared the women and children managed to avoid cameras as they departed the airport.
Kirsty Rosse-Emile, pictured early last year. (ABC News: Haybar Othman)
The sister of Kirsty Rosse-Emile, one of the so-called ISIS brides believed to have returned to Australia, told 7News she required “a lot of support — like just to talk to someone, someone to talk to about what’s happened”.
Krystle Rosse-Emile said her sister was groomed before leaving Australia to get married at 14 to a man who later became an ISIS fighter.
In February last year, Kirsty, aged 30 at the time, said she had been detained in “Australia Street”, a camp deep in the Syrian desert, for six years, after being captured by Kurdish forces when they defeated the Islamic State terror group in March 2019.
“You don’t know my story, you don’t know why I’m here, it’s not my choice to be here,” she told the ABC at the time.
Kirsty said her story was “very unique”.
“I can’t really talk about so much of it here, because it might make problems for me,” she said last year.