A week since a group of 13 Australian women and children with ties to former Islamic State fighters left a Syrian refugee camp for Australia, they remain in the capital Damascus in a state of limbo.
There has been uncertainty in Syria about whether the group of four women and nine children from the same extended family, who are Australian citizens with Australian passports, can return.
Syria’s Information Ministry told the Associated Press on Thursday the group was turned back before reaching Damascus airport after the foreign ministry was informed that “the Australian government had refused to receive them”.
“These families are still awaiting a solution, which can only be achieved through coordination with the relevant international parties,” the information ministry said.
But an Australian international law expert said there was nothing legally stopping the group from returning to the country.
“There is nothing under Australian law at the moment which prohibits any of this group from physically travelling,” Australian National University international law expert Don Rothwell said.
Exclusive: Group of Australian families leave Al-Roj camp in Syria
The ABC revealed the group left the notorious Al Roj refugee camp by bus on April 24, after Syrian interior forces came to the camp in Kurdish-controlled north-east Syria to pick them up directly and take them to Damascus.
The ABC has been told that family and friends of the group have travelled from Australia to Damascus to help bring them home.
It follows a failed attempt by a larger group of 34 Australian women and children who tried to leave the camp in February but were forced to turn around, after Syrian officials said their travel was not properly coordinated with government forces.
The group’s attempted return has sparked a fiery debate in Australia, with the federal government saying the group would face “the full force of the law” if they came home.
“There is no way I’ll interfere with anything operationally,” Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said on Thursday.
“But I will say anyone who has broken the law will face the full force of the law and I suspect some of these individuals will be weighing up whether they want to come back to Australia ever.”
A group of Australian families tried to leave the Al Roj camp on February 16 (pictured) but were forced to turn back. (Supplied)
Government threats may have changed group’s ‘calculations’
It is not clear whether Syrian authorities were acting on an express directive of the Australian government not to allow the group through, or interpreting a position from public statements by senior politicians, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
When asked whether a specific request had been made to Syrian authorities, Mr Albanese said the federal government had not been involved.
“We are not involved, and we’re not providing any support, and that’s been documented,” he told SBS News on Thursday night.
“We’re not repatriating these people.”
The federal government’s strong rhetoric caused a similar stalemate in February after the failed attempt by a larger group to leave the camp.
Kurdish officials, who manage Al Roj, told the ABC in February they had paid attention to the media reporting on the Australian government’s comments, and suggested that would slow the process for the women returning home.
“This issue arose back in February and there was some suggestion that Syrian authorities were reluctant to allow them to travel because of the comments the prime minister was making about them not being welcomed to Australia,” Dr Rothwell said.
“Those comments have been reinforced this week, but ultimately it does not create a legal barrier for them to travel.”
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Reporting from a number of outlets has suggested that, once again, Syrian authorities are suggesting the onward travel to Australia cannot happen because the Australian government has not confirmed it will take the group.
“The [threat] of legal action by the government against some of the women could have changed their calculations about returning,” former army officer and political analyst Rodger Shannahan said.
A number of the women have previously told the media they would be willing to subject themselves to scrutiny of Australian intelligence and law enforcement officials if they managed to get home.
Twenty-one Australians with links to ISIS fighters remain in the Al Roj camp, but the manager of the camp said there were no plans for the remaining women and children to leave.
One of the women in the camp has been issued with a Temporary Exclusion Order (TEO), barring her from travelling to Australia for a period of two years on national security grounds.
The ABC understands the TEO applies to one of the women who remains in Al Roj, not one of the four women who left last week.
Some of the women are believed to have accompanied their husbands to Syria at the height of Islamic State’s deadly rampage through Iraq and Syria, while others likely travelled to the area with family and married IS fighters after their arrival.
When the group’s caliphate collapsed in 2019, family members and children of alleged Islamic State fighters were moved into refugee camps such as Al Roj, where many have remained since.
A number of the Australian women claim they were lured to Syria under false pretences or coerced into going.
US urges countries to repatriate citizens from camp
The US has been pressuring countries to repatriate their citizens from the Al Roj camp.
“The Trump administration is in active communication with nations that have citizens in Syria, specifically within the [Al Roj] camp, to facilitate repatriation of both those with and without ISIS affiliation,” a senior White House official said.
Mr Albanese said on Thursday that the United States’s position was not new.
“That has been their position for some time, and we have indicated our position for some time,” he said.
The squalid camps are controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, but the US provides funding and support to help maintain them, and manage people linked to ISIS.
US officials have said they could not fund and manage the camps indefinitely and wanted a long-term solution, which was why they had been pushing countries like Australia to take their citizens back.
What could happen when the families return to Australia?
There are three possible scenarios for the women if they return to Australia, according to Dr Rothwell.
Al Roj officials have told the ABC that the group has been issued single-entry passports.
Dr Rothwell said some of the women could be arrested on arrival by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) if they were suspected of committing an offence under Australian law.
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Another option is they could be arrested at some point in the future, following an ongoing AFP investigation into their conduct in Syria.
A third scenario is that they are allowed to enter and go about their business, but they are subject to control orders under the Australian terrorism and security legislation.
One precedent Australia does have, Dr Rothwell said, was the case of Mariam Raad, who was one of four women and 13 children to arrive in Sydney from the Al Roj camp in October 2022.
Ms Raad was arrested in January 2023 and charged with entering a region controlled by a terrorist organisation when she went to Syria in 2014 to be with her Islamic State fighter husband.
“Mariam Raad had been back in the country for a few months before the AFP arrested her,” Dr Rothwell said.
Ms Raad avoided jail time and received no conviction. She was discharged conditionally in 2024.
But Dr Rothwell said the AFP has had “a lot of notice” about the group’s intended return from Al Roj after the failed attempt in February.
“They’ve known for some time that there is a strong prospect that they’re going to return,” he said.
“I would think that if they’ve gathered together evidence that they’ve possibly committed an offence, there is no reason why, in principle, they couldn’t arrest them on return to Australia.”
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Organisations such as Save the Children Australia are calling for the children to be returned safely.
“For the past seven years, these innocent children have been growing up in tents in desert camps, with limited access to healthcare and their education badly disrupted, in conditions that would alarm most Australians,” Save the Children Australia CEO Mat Tinkler said.
“We call on the federal government not to abandon the remaining Australian children and their mothers, and to fulfil its responsibility to bring them home from north-eastern Syria.”