MELBOURNE – Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Tuesday that Australia will not be bringing back a group of 34 women and children from Syria, who are reportedly linked to the Islamic State.
According to officials, these individuals, representing 11 families, were expected to depart from Damascus to Australia. However, due to procedural issues, Syrian authorities redirected them back to the Roj camp in northeastern Syria before they could leave on Monday.
Since the collapse of the Islamic State in 2019, only two groups of Australians have managed to return from Syrian camps with government assistance, while others have made their way back independently.
Albanese remained silent on claims that the women and children in question possessed Australian passports.
In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in Melbourne, Albanese stated, “We are offering no support and will not be bringing these individuals back.”
He further commented, “We have little compassion for those who traveled abroad to contribute to a cause aimed at establishing a caliphate that threatened our way of life. As my mother used to say, ‘You make your bed, you lie in it.’”
Albanese noted that the child welfare-focused international charity Save the Children had failed to establish in Australia’s courts that the Australian government had a responsibility to repatriate citizens from Syrian camps.
After the federal court ruled in the government’s favor in 2024, Save the Children Australia chief executive Mat Tinkler argued the government had a moral, if not legal, obligation to repatriate families.
Albanese said if the latest group made their way to Australia without government help, they could be charged.
It was an offense under Australian law to travel to the former Islamic State stronghold of al-Raqqa province without a legitimate reason from 2014 to 2017. The maximum penalty was 10 years in prison.
“It’s unfortunate that children are impacted by this as well, but we are not providing any support. And if anyone does manage to find their way back to Australia, then they’ll face the full force of the law, if any laws have been broken,” Albanese added.
The last group of Australians to be repatriated from Syrian camps arrived in Sydney in October 2022.
They were four mothers, former partners of Islamic State supporters, and 13 children.
Australian officials had assessed the group as the most vulnerable among 60 Australian women and children held in Roj camp, the government said at the time.
Eight offspring of two slain Australian Islamic State fighters were repatriated from Syria in 2019 by the conservative government that preceded Albanese’s center-left Labor Party administration.
The issue of Islamic State supporters resurfaced in Australia after the killings of 15 people at a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14. The attackers were allegedly inspired by IS.
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