Melbourne grandmother Kawsar Abbas and her 31-year-old daughter have been arrested and are expected to be charged with \u201ccrimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The so-called ISIS brides, who returned from the Middle East on Thursday night after spending over a decade in the region were arrested at Melbourne International Airport. <\/p>\n
Another daughter and sister travelling with the women was not charged with any offences.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is expected a 53-year-old woman will be charged tonight or tomorrow with the following four Commonwealth offences, crimes against humanity; enslavement, crimes against humanity; possess a slave, crimes against humanity; use a slave, crimes against humanity; engage in slave trading,\u2019\u2019 AFP Assistant Commissioner Counter Terrorism Stephen Nutt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese offences each carry a maximum penalty of 25 years imprisonment.<\/p>\n
\u201cA 31-year-old woman will also expect to be charged tonight or tomorrow with the following two Commonwealth offences: crimes against humanity and enslavement. Crimes against humanity use a slave. Both offenses carry a maximum penalty of 25 years imprisonment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two women will appear before a Victorian court once they have been charged.<\/p>\n
While the AFP did not name any of the women, he confirmed expected charges in relation to Janai Safar, the only ISIS bride to land at Sydney airport.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt Sydney International Airport, the New South Wales joint counterterrorism team arrested a 32-year-old woman who is expected to be charged tonight or tomorrow with the following two Commonwealth offences, entering or remaining in a declared area and being a member of a terrorist organization,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth offences carry a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe woman will appear before a New South Wales court once she is charged.\u201d<\/p>\n
The AFP said operational planning for these matters started in 2015.
Ms Safar was taken into custody at Sydney airport and driven through a media scrum on her way to the Mascot police station.<\/p>\n
The former nursing student, who once told the media she never wanted to return to Australia, has a nine-year-old son born after her relationship with an ISIS fighter.<\/p>\n
In a 2019 interview, Ms Safar told journalists that she did not regret travelling to the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was my decision to come here to go away from where women are naked on the street. I don\u2019t want my son to be raised around that,\u201d Ms Safar said in 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t train or kill anyone. I just sat at home, and they will put me in jail, they will take my child off me. Why? I\u2019m a Muslim.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw everything (the coalition forces did), and no one gets punished for that. They say I\u2019m not supposed to be in Syria, but they (the Australians) come to Syria with planes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burly men wait at Melbourne airport<\/p>\n
A massive group of supporters have gathered at Melbourne airport to escort the family of three mothers and eight children through the throng of reporters.<\/p>\n
Dressed in black, some of the men were wearing masks and said they would be providing \u201csecurity\u201d and escorting the women and their children. <\/p>\n
The Melbourne group were filmed shortly after disembarking the flight by ABC reporter Bridget Rollason, who travelled on board the same flight from Doha. <\/p>\n
Speaking on ABC TV, Education Minister Jason Clare said the women would face the full force of the law on arrival in Australia. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got faith in the Australian Federal Police. They know what they\u2019re doing. This is not their first rodeo,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the Liberal Party let 40 foreign fighters into the country, they took the steps that they needed to take to keep Australians safe. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I trust, in the words of the AFP Commissioner yesterday, when she said that some of these women will be arrested when they arrive and others will be subject to further investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Clare also confirmed that 9 children who are returning will be provided access to special programs to re-educate the children against extremist views.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, kids don\u2019t get to choose who their parents are, and these children have seen sorts of things that no child should ever be exposed to, and it\u2019s going to take time for these children to reintegrate into Australian society,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are the sort of programs that the Australian Federal Police run, and I would expect that the Federal Police would want to run countering violent extremism programs with all of the children that return.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking on Sky News, opposition home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam said the Albanese Government never should have let the women and children back into Australia. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey were born into or raised amongst fundamentalist Islamist extremists, so something\u2019s going to have rubbed off on these kids, and therefore they are a risk to our society,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m very worried about what we are bringing back into this country. They\u2019re here. They\u2019re our problem as a country, we\u2019re going to have to pay for them and we\u2019re going to have to be worried.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Soldier of Allah\u2019: ISIS bride\u2019s gushing posts<\/p>\n
The mother of two Australian ISIS brides arriving back in Melbourne tonight previously described her son as a \u201csoldier of Allah\u201d in social media posts.<\/p>\n
Kawsar Abbas and her two adult daughters Zahra and Zeinab are set to touch down in Victoria this afternoon with a large group of children.<\/p>\n
Some of these children were born in the Middle East after the women married Islamic State fighters and have spent years in Syrian refugee camps.<\/p>\n
AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett said police would be waiting to arrest and charge some of the members when they arrived in Australia on the Qatar Airways flight from Doha.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome individuals will be arrested and charged. Some will face continued investigations when they arrive in Australia,\u201d she said today.<\/p>\n
Abbas\u2019s husband, Mohammed Ahmad, is accused of keeping two women as Yazidi slaves. He denied those allegations from behind bars in a Syrian prison in 2023.<\/p>\n
In 2014, the same year the family travelled to the region for their son Omar\u2019s wedding, Abbas posted the following message on Facebook.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a beautiful message this morning from someone I don\u2019t know, a revert who told me Omar is a true soldier of Allah,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes dear sis, a soldier who won\u2019t walk away from the cry of the orphans. May Allah protect you both and unite us soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their father Mohammad Ahmad has always insisted he was doing charity work in the region before his two sons Omar and Ahmad joined him overseas. They both died in the conflict.<\/p>\n
However Mohammad Ahmad, who remains in a Syrian jail, has been accused of keeping a Yazidi woman named Sarab as a slave. Sarab says she was sent to the family when she was 13.<\/p>\n
She knew the Australian man as Abu Omar, a name that the grandmother also uses for her husband on social media. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very unpleasant. I was their slave and they could do whatever they wanted to me,\u2019\u2019 Sarab told the ABC.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy life was controlled by them. It felt like my existence did not matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
After initially telling the ABC in 2019 that his son had a slave but she was treated as \u201ca daughter\u201d Mohammed Ahmad now says he never even saw his son\u2019s Yazidi slave.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the accusation, it\u2019s not true,\u201d the man told the ABC in 2023.<\/p>\n
Meet the ISIS brides<\/p>\n
One of the \u201cISIS brides\u201d returning to Australia, Zahra Ahmad, is the widow of a notorious Islamic State recruiter who previously pleaded with Australians not to \u201cjudge\u201d the women she says were trapped in the region as a result of \u201cmale influences\u201d.<\/p>\n
Two years ago, was interviewed in an SBS television documentary, insisting some of the women didn\u2019t have a choice after male members of the family swore allegiance to Islamic State. She said she understood why people would be nervous about her return.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand that, and I think I would have the same concern if I was back home,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what I would like to say is, \u2018Don\u2019t be so quick to judge\u2019. Try and look at it from our perspective. We are also mothers. You know, we\u2019re human beings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t make this bed. For me, that doesn\u2019t apply.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are now forced to suffer for the decisions that other people \u2013 other male influences, you know \u2013 made on our behalf.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow they\u2019re all gone, and we\u2019re left to suffer with our kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
She later married the notorious Islamic State recruiter Muhammad Zahab, a former Australian maths teacher who died in an air strike in 2018.<\/p>\n
The documentary featured video of her teaching her 12-year-old son, who has never attended school, basic maths.<\/p>\n
Two years ago, she feared her male children being taken away from her.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they take them away from me, I might never see them again,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t have that happen to my kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are innocent. They haven\u2019t done anything wrong. I don\u2019t believe they should be punished for something they don\u2019t even have anything to do with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her son said he also feared being taken from the family because he was approaching his teenage years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a big boy,\u201d her 12-year-old son said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to get separated from my mum.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said her kids had been packed and ready to return home for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kids every day had their shoes ready on the door, had their clothes ready to get dressed to go, had their bags ready,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kids that have gone home, they\u2019ve gone back to school, reintegrated back into society nicely.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want my child to have the same opportunity to be healed. Going to school, going to the park, going to the zoo, these beautiful things that they should be allowed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Who are the ISIS brides returning to Australia<\/p>\n
Kawsar Abbas<\/p>\n
The 54-year-old is from Melbourne. She is the mother of Zahra and Zeinab.<\/p>\n
She is the wife of Mohammed Ahmad, who ran a charity to support the people of Syria that the AFP believed was funnelling money to Islamic State.<\/p>\n
The family first travelled to Syria in 2014 for a family wedding, they say this was before realising that their son, Omar, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.<\/p>\n
Zahra Ahmad<\/p>\n
Zahra Ahmad married notorious Islamic State recruiter Muhammad Zahab, who died in an air strike in 2018.<\/p>\n
She is the eldest daughter of Mohammed and Kawsar Abbas and is believed to have been Zahab\u2019s second wife after he also married another Australian woman.<\/p>\n
She had three sons.<\/p>\n
Zeinab Ahmad<\/p>\n
Zeinab, 31, has pleaded with Australia to repatriate the families.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a place for a child to be, and every day.. it\u2019s just getting harder,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a street (in the camp) \u2014 it\u2019s called Australia Street. We live closely, we have a strong connection because we all have the same motive. We all want to get home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Janai Safar<\/p>\n
A former health science student, Janai left Australia in 2015 to travel to Syria. She married an Islamic State fighter and had a child a year later.<\/p>\n
She was quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2017 outlining her concerns that her children would be taken away from her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t train or kill anyone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just sat at home, and they will put me in jail, they will take my child off me. Why? I\u2019m a Muslim.\u201d<\/p>\n
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