First group of IS families lands in Sydney from Syria

Seventeen Australian family members of Islamic State fighters have arrived in Sydney in the first stage of a highly sensitive operation to repatriate displaced women and children from a northern Syrian refugee camp.

The four women and their 13 children arrived at Sydney Airport early on Saturday morning.

Foreign IS wives and children line up in the Al Hawl camp in Syria to be taken to shops in the camp in 2019.Credit:Kate Geraghty

They are the first Australian family members of IS fighters to be repatriated since 2019, when eight orphans from the conflict were returned home.

A further 43 women and children being held in the al-Roj refugee camp in northern Syria are scheduled to be repatriated in the coming months.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil confirmed the group’s arrival in a statement on Saturday morning.

“At all times the focus has been the safety and security of all Australians as well as the safety of those involved in the operation,” she said.

“Informed by national security advice, the government has carefully considered the range of security, community and welfare factors in making the decision to repatriate.

“The decision to repatriate these women and their children was informed by individual assessments following detailed work by national security agencies.”

The operation has been criticised by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, as well as the newly elected independent MP for Fowler, in south-west Sydney, Dai Le who said it was “hurtful for refugees in my community of Fowler, many of whom have fled persecution from ISIS”.

Among the women returning to Australia is 31-year-old Mariam Dabboussy, whose father, Kamalle Dabboussy, has publicly campaigned for the return of his daughter and her three children for the past three years.

He told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age earlier this month the “women and their families have acknowledged the political reality of the situation that there’s a degree of concern”.

Who are the families returning from Syria?

• Now aged 22, Shayma Assaad was just 15 when her parents took her from Sydney to Syria. She has given birth to four children in Syrian refugee camps who will also be repatriated. The youngest child is aged three. Her husband, a Sydney tradesman turned Islamic State fighter Mohammed Noor Masri, has been detained by Kurdish authorities since 2019.
• Shayma’s mother Bessima Assaad is also expected to be repatriated, alongside her two other daughters Assya and Maysa. Her husband Ahmad, a former Crown Security employee, is jailed in Syria.
• Mariam Raad, 31, has four children aged under 11: Dujana, Haritha, JuJu and Sumaya. She is the widow of Muhammad Zahab, a Sydney mathematics teacher who became known as the most senior IS leader from Australia.
• Mariam Dabboussy says her husband was convinced by his brother to travel to Syria and become an IS fighter during a 2015 family holiday. Her husband died three months after arriving in Syria, leaving her stranded. Originally from Bankstown, the 31-year old has three young children.

As a result, women in the camps have volunteered to be subjected to terrorism control orders on arrival in Australia, meaning they may need to wear tracking devices, report to authorities regularly and be restricted from communicating with certain people.

Some of the women are likely to be charged with terrorism offences or for entering a proscribed area upon their return. This is not expected to apply to most, if any, of the four women in the first group of returnees.

“Allegations of unlawful activity will continue to be investigated by the NSW Joint Counter Terrorism Team, comprised of the Australian Federal Police, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, NSW Police and the NSW Crime Commission. Any identified offences may lead to law enforcement action being taken,” O’Neil said.

The home affairs minister said the movement of Australians from the camp followed “similar repatriations” in the US, Europe and most recently Canada, where one of two women repatriated was charged with terrorism offences on her arrival on Canadian soil this week.

with Matthew Knott

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