Relations 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 residence from a detention camp in Syria, the newest growth within the case of fraught repatriation of households of IS fighters.
The girl was planning to affix one other 33 Australians — 10 girls and 23 kids — and fly on Monday from Damascus, Syria, to Australia, Dwelling 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 determine, had been issued with a brief exclusion order on Monday and her legal professionals 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 mother and father for the predicaments of their offspring stranded in Syria.
“These are horrific conditions which have been introduced on these kids by actions of their mother and father. They’re horrible conditions. However they’ve been introduced on completely by horrific selections that their mother and father made,” Burke instructed Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Burke has the facility 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 had been had been launched to in 2019 to forestall defeated Islamic State fighters from returning to Australia. There aren’t any public experiences 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
Relations of suspected Islamic State militants who’re Australian nationals stroll towards a van sure 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 girls who had anticipated to journey residence refused to talk to The Related Press on Wednesday.
One of many girls, Zeinab Ahmad, mentioned they’d 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 had 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’ve got no contact with the Australian authorities relating to this matter, as we’re not a part of the method,” she mentioned. “We’ve got left it to the households to resolve.”
Rojava mentioned that after the group had departed the camp to journey to Damascus, they had been contacted by a Syrian authorities official and warned to show again. The households had been “very upset” upon returning to the camp, she mentioned.
“We just lately requested that every one nations and households come and take again their residents,” Rojava mentioned.
She added that Syrian authorities don’t need to see a “repeat of what occurred in al-Hol camp” — a a lot bigger camp, additionally in northeastern Syria that when housed tens of 1000’s of individuals, principally girls and youngsters, 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 lots of the camp’s residents fled.
That raised issues that IS members would regroup and stage new assaults in Syria.
The Syrian authorities then established management of al-Hol and has begun shifting its remaining residents to a different camp in Aleppo province. The Kurdish-led drive stays in charge of 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 youngsters have been detained in camps because the 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 girls and youngsters 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 newest group.
“These are individuals who selected to go abroad to align themselves with an ideology which is the caliphate, which is a brutal, reactionary ideology and that seeks to undermine and destroy our lifestyle,” Albanese instructed reporters.
He was referring to the militants’ seize of vast 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, they’d households and raised kids there.
“We’re doing nothing to repatriate or to help these individuals. I believe it is unlucky that kids are caught up on this, that is not their choice, however it’s the choice of their mother and father or their mom,” Albanese added.
