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Planes carrying 13 Australian women and children suspected of links to the Islamic State group arrived in their home country on Thursday, where the adults are facing possible charges related to their time in the so-called caliphate, which spans Syria and Iraq.
The Australian government announced on Wednesday that the women and children, who have spent years in a camp in the Syrian desert, planned to return to Australia, and two Qatar Airways flights departed from Doha on Thursday.
The first flight, carrying three Australian women and eight children, landed in Melbourne, while another flight carrying a woman and her son arrived in Sydney shortly after.
A woman who arrived in Sydney was seen being taken by the police to a local station. The Australian Federal Police are expected to speak to reporters later on Thursday about the reception of women at both airports.
The Australian government has criticized the women for supporting Islamic State fighters in Syria and has refused to help them return home.
Police have investigated for more than a decade whether Australians were involved in atrocities while in Syria, including terrorism and crimes against humanity, such as the slave trade.
Deakin University extremism expert Joshua Roose said Australian authorities were investigating abuses within the caliphate, including the enslavement of Yazidi women and police abuses of sharia law.
“Some of the worst forms of violence are actually committed by women, so we have to understand that it’s a problem,” Roose told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Women are not ready to face imprisonment in Australia
ABC reporter Bridget Rollason, who was on the Melbourne flight from Doha, said some women told her they had spent 12 years in Syria, having children born in hell inside the camps.
“When I asked them about the prospect of being arrested, they told me that they are determined to play for their children, because they want to bring their children back to Australia,” said Rollason.
“One of the women I spoke to said the thing she missed the most was coffee. She said she couldn’t wait to get to Little Collins Street in Melbourne to drink coffee again.”
Under Australian law, it was an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison to travel to the former Islamic State group’s base in Raqqa, Syria, without reasonable cause from 2014 to 2017.
A previous attempt to return 34 women and children to Australia from the same camp in February was turned back by Syrian authorities.
At that time, the Australian government prevented one of these women from returning.
The woman, who officials did not identify, issued a temporary removal order, which Australia can use to prevent high-risk citizens from returning for two years.
The charity is pushing for the welfare of children
The orders were created by laws introduced in 2019 to prevent defeated Islamic State fighters from returning to Australia.
That woman remains banned from Australia by order and did not return on Thursday. Opposition lawyers urged the government to issue similar orders against the four women who recently returned before boarding their flights.
Such orders cannot be made to children under the age of 14. Australia has decided to separate mothers and children who want to return from Syria.
Aid organization Save the Children has failed in a 2024 court bid to force the Australian government to repatriate civilians from Syrian camps.
Save the Children Australia chief executive, Matt Tinkler, said Australian authorities must now prioritize the welfare of returned children.
“Two-thirds of this group we’re talking about…are children,” Tinkler said. “We need to focus now on focusing on these children and giving them a chance to return to a normal life here in Australia.”
Australian governments have repatriated Australian women and children from internment camps in Syria on two occasions. Some Australians have returned without government assistance.
