Australian Women and Children Linked to ISIS Fighters Return Home

Three Australian women who returned to their home country on Thursday after years in detention camps in Syria for family members of men affiliated with the Islamic State were arrested and face charges including suspected terrorism and crimes against humanity, according to the police.

The three were among four Australian women and nine children who arrived in the country on Thursday. Their fate had long been a point of contention in Australia, which has assisted in the return of some relatives but declined to repatriate others.

The Australian government previously said that it had provided no help to this group, whose release was in the end negotiated and arranged partly by family members.

Two of the women, ages 53 and 31, will be charged with multiple counts of crimes against humanity relating to enslavement, Stephen Nutt, an assistant commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, said at a news conference about three hours after the women landed in Melbourne. The charges each carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison, he said.

A third woman, a 32-year-old who arrived in Sydney, will face charges including being a member of a terrorist organization, according to the police. Those charges carry prison sentences of up to 10 years.

The authorities did not give details about the slavery charges, but local news media reported that they related to the Yazidis, a small religious minority. Thousands of Yazidi women were kidnapped from Iraq, held captive and sexually abused by Islamic State fighters during the group’s control over parts of Syria and Iraq.

The children in Australia, most of whom were setting foot in the country for the first time, will undergo programs on community integration and countering violent extremism, as well as therapy, according to the federal police. Their ages were not available.

The crimes against humanity charges would signal a new level of criminal prosecutions in Australia against returned family members associated with ISIS.

In 2023, the authorities in Australia charged one woman who had returned from Syria with entering a region controlled by a terrorist organization. She pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence on the condition of 25 months’ good behavior, supervision and psychological counseling.

Human rights organizations and family members of the women and children in the camps have for years appealed to the Australian government to bring them home, citing dire conditions in Syria and the children’s innocence. Save the Children Australia sued the government on behalf of some of them, but the courts ultimately dismissed the case.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia said in a news interview this year that it was “unfortunate” that children were swept up in the situation, but that there would be no assistance from his government.

Humanitarian groups and camp administrators have warned that the detention sites, where tens of thousands of women and children have been held for years, have increasingly become recruiting grounds for the Islamic State, which at its peak in 2014 and 2015 ruled over vast stretches of Syria and Iraq.

Amid poor conditions and disaffection, especially among the youth who make up about 60 percent of residents, the camps are increasingly “incubators for radicalization,” Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, said last year.

The United States has urged governments to repatriate and reintegrate their own nationals, which some European countries also remain reluctant to do. Some governments have gone as far as to strip the citizenship of some individuals.

The Australian returnees this week came from Al Roj camp, near Syria’s border with Iraq and Turkey.

Some of the women told a journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation while transiting through the airport in Doha, Qatar, on Wednesday that their children expected Australia to be “like paradise,” and that conditions in the camp had been like hell.

Seven women and 14 children of Australian nationality still remain in the camp, according to rights groups that provide humanitarian relief there. Australian officials have previously issued a “temporary exclusion order” barring one individual from returning, but have declined to provide details.

Mat Tinkler, the chief executive of Save the Children Australia, said family members of the women and children had traveled to the region to negotiate their release from the camp.

“The Australian government has abrogated its responsibility and forced family members to take matters into their own hands,” he said. “The reality is they are Australian citizens, and they don’t have another place to go.”

Human Rights Watch said in a report in February that some 2,300 foreign women and children remained in Al Roj camp, where some said they were subject to raids, beatings and extortion by Kurdish internal security forces.