IS-linked women return to Australia from Syria

Thirteen women and children with links to the Islamic State (IS) group have arrived home in Australia, after spending years in detention in Syria.

The group, who had been living in the al-Roj camp since 2019, had been the subject of heated political debate in Australia, with the government saying it would give them no help to return.

Three women and eight children - believed to be members of the same family - landed in Melbourne late in the afternoon, with another woman and her child arriving in Sydney shortly afterwards. Reports said she was taken into police custody.

Police have said some of the women will be arrested and charged after arriving, while others face "continued investigations".

The group that arrived in Melbourne is reportedly made up of grandmother Kawsar Abbas and her adult daughters Zeinab and Zahra Ahmed, and their eight children.

Abbas is married to Mohammad Ahmad, who ran a charity that Australian police suspect was used to send cash to IS. He denied the accusation in an interview with the national broadcaster ABC in 2019, after it tracked him down to a prison in Syria.

The woman arriving in Sydney has been named by local media as Janai Safar - she is accompanied by her nine-year-old son, who was born in Syria.

Police boarded the plane and took Safar into custody on arrival, Australian media reported. The Age newspaper showed pictures of her being escorted from Sydney airport by police in a vehicle.

Safar is a former Sydney nursing student who travelled to Syria in 2015 and reportedly married an IS fighter.

In an interview with the Australian newspaper in 2019 she said it had been her own decision to go to Syria and that she did not want to return to Australia for fear of being arrested and having her child taken from her.

On Wednesday police commissioner Krissy Barratt confirmed some of the women would be arrested and charged. The potential charges included terrorism offences such as entering, or remaining in, declared areas, and crimes against humanity offences, such as engaging in slave trading.

The group of 13 are part of a larger cohort of 34 believed to include wives, widows and children of IS fighters who left the camp in February but returned for "technical reasons" with the Australian government refusing to officially repatriate them.

One member of the cohort was banned from returning to Australia earlier this year when the government issued a "temporary exclusion order", meaning they cannot return for up to two years. That person is not among the group that landed on Thursday.

Boarding a connecting flight to Melbourne in Doha, the women told a reporter for the national broadcaster ABC they were excited to return home, saying Australia was "like paradise" to them.

"We just want our children to be safe. It was like hell [in Syria] for them," one said.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Australia had become aware that the women were to return home on Wednesday, when tickets were booked.

"These are people who have made the horrific choice to join a dangerous terrorist organisation and to place their children in an unspeakable situation," he told reporters, adding that "any members of this cohort who have committed crimes can expect to face the full force of the law."

The government had been preparing for the group's return since 2014, Burke said, with "long-standing plans" to "manage and monitor them".

The head of Australia's spy agency, Mike Burgess, said he was not "concerned immediately" by the group's return but "they will get our attention as you'd expect".

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allen said children returning to her state would be "asked to undertake countering violent extremism programs. That is appropriate."

-BBC