Australia won’t repatriate 34 women and children from Syria

Australia will not repatriate 34 women and children from Syria, who are alleged to have ties to the Islamic State group, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed on Tuesday.

The group, comprising 11 families, had been due to fly from Damascus but Syrian authorities turned them back to the Roj camp in northeast Syria on Monday, citing "procedural problems."

Only two groups of Australians have been repatriated with government assistance from Syrian camps since the Islamic State group's fall in 2019, with others returning independently. Mr Albanese declined to comment on reports that the latest group held Australian passports.

“We’re providing absolutely no support and we are not repatriating people,” Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp. in Melbourne.

“We have no sympathy, frankly, for people who traveled overseas in order to participate in what was an attempt to establish a caliphate to undermine, destroy, our way of life. And so, as my mother would say, ‘You make your bed, you lie in it,’” Albanese added.

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.

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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.