Australia bans a citizen with alleged IS hyperlinks from coming back from Syria : NPR

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 most recent improvement within the case of fraught repatriation of households of IS fighters.

The girl was planning to hitch one other 33 Australians — 10 girls and 23 youngsters — and fly on Monday from Damascus, Syria, to Australia, Dwelling Affairs Minister Tony Burke stated Wednesday.

However the group was turned again by Syrian authorities to the Roj detention camp, on account of unspecified procedural issues.

The Australian authorities had acted on information that the group deliberate to depart Syria, Burke stated. He stated the girl, whom he didn’t establish, 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 stated, declining to elaborate on whether or not she had youngsters — although he typically blamed the dad and mom for the predicaments of their offspring stranded in Syria.

“These are horrific conditions which were introduced on these youngsters by actions of their dad and mom. They’re horrible conditions. However they’ve been introduced on completely by horrific selections that their dad and mom made,” Burke instructed Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Burke has the facility to make use of short-term exclusion orders to forestall high-risk residents from returning to Australia for as much as two years.

The legal guidelines have been have 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 stated safety companies had not suggested that any of the opposite Australians within the group warranted an exclusion order. Such orders cannot be made in opposition to youngsters 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 yr 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, stated they’d been suggested by an lawyer to not speak to journalists.

A safety official on the camp, Chavrê Rojava, stated that members of the family of the detainees — who she stated have been Australians of Lebanese origin — had traveled to Syria to rearrange their return. They introduced short-term passports that had been issued for the would-be returnees, Rojava stated.

“We now have no contact with the Australian authorities concerning this matter, as we’re not a part of the method,” she stated. “We now have left it to the households to resolve.”

Rojava stated that after the group had departed the camp to journey to Damascus, they have been contacted by a Syrian authorities official and warned to show again. The households have been “very upset” upon returning to the camp, she stated.

“We lately requested that each one international locations and households come and take again their residents,” Rojava stated.

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 preventing between Syrian authorities forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which had managed al-Hol, guards deserted their posts and most of the camp’s residents fled.

That raised considerations 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 power stays in charge of Roj camp and a ceasefire is now in place.

The thorny situation of repatriating IS-linked international residents

Former Islamic State fighters from a number of international locations, their wives and youngsters have been detained in camps for the reason that 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 most recent 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 broad 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 international international locations traveled to Syria on the time to hitch the IS. Through the years, they’d households and raised youngsters there.

“We’re doing nothing to repatriate or to help these folks. I feel it is unlucky that youngsters are caught up on this, that is not their determination, nevertheless it’s the choice of their dad and mom or their mom,” Albanese added.