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Australia's government says it will not repatriate a group of women and children from a refugee camp in Syria, a group with alleged links to the Islamic State. The political debate over their return has raised questions of what should be done with citizens abroad who joined ISIS and have been stranded for years after the militant group was defeated. Kristina Kukolja reports.
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PRIME MINISTER ANTHONY ALBANESE: My mother would have said, if you make your bed, you lie in it.
KRISTINA KUKOLJA, BYLINE: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, distancing his government from any efforts to help the 34 women and children hoping to return to Australia.
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ALBANESE: The government is providing no support for the repatriation of these people.
KUKOLJA: The group reportedly attempted to leave Al-Roj refugee camp in Syria earlier this month but was turned back. They were among thousands of foreign nationals held since 2019 in camps housing relatives of suspected Islamic State members. The women are the alleged wives of dead or captured fighters who joined the militant group, which is listed as a terrorist organization in Australia. The majority, though, are children.
BEN SAUL: Who did not choose to join Islamic State, did not go to Syria to fight and who are themselves victims of terrorism, victims of violence and child abuse.
KUKOLJA: That's Ben Saul, the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights.
SAUL: They have a right under Australian law and under international law to enter their own country of nationality. It's not the job of the Syrian government to indefinitely manage Australian citizens who are present illegally in Syria.
KUKOLJA: Australia's government says it can't prevent most in the group from entering the country and was legally obligated to provide them with passports for travel. It has temporarily banned one of the women on security grounds and warned others could face prosecution. That decision would have relied on extensive domestic and international intelligence, says Professor Clinton Fernandes, a security expert at the University of New South Wales.
CLINTON FERNANDES: There would be detailed collection of where they went from their passport, if they are in any particular camp, who their networks are, what kind of religious services they're involved in. And that goes on for many years.
KUKOLJA: Their possible return has created a political storm in Australia, drawing criticism from the main opposition conservative bloc leader Angus Taylor, speaking here on Sky News.
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ANGUS TAYLOR: We think that this is a threat to Australians. Frankly, this is a government that's not serious about protecting our way of life.
KUKOLJA: He wants the government to ban Australians with suspected links to Islamic State from entering the country and to criminalize those who help them. Australian governments, both center-left Labor and conservative, have previously repatriated citizens from camps in Syria, most recently in 2022 under the current prime minister. Anthony Albanese has not explained the shift in his government's position. But Clinton Fernandes says there's been a change in the political climate.
FERNANDES: That politicization means that you can't really disentangle the national security problem from the political problem, from the immigration problem, and from the fact that the opposition is facing, to the right of its political flank, a far-right political party that is now taking over the ground.
KUKOLJA: New South Wales is the first state to offer to settle some of the returnees if they're able to come back to Australia. For NPR News, I'm Kristina Kukolja in Melbourne.
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