By Renju Jose and Alasdair Pal<\/p>\n
SYDNEY, May 7 (Reuters) – Three Australian women linked to the extremist group Islamic State were arrested on Thursday after arriving home \u200cwith their children following years in a camp in Syria, and were expected to be \u200ccharged with slavery and terrorism offences, police said.<\/p>\n
The Australian government said on Wednesday that four women and nine children \u200bwho had been detained in northeast Syria planned to return to Australia, but would receive no government assistance.<\/p>\n
A 54-year-old woman arriving at Melbourne airport on Thursday evening was arrested and was expected to be charged with four counts of crimes against humanity relating to slavery, the Australian Federal \u200cPolice said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
A 31-year-old woman \u2060on the same flight was also arrested and would be charged with two slavery offences, AFP Assistant Commissioner Stephen Nutt told a press conference \u2060in Canberra.<\/p>\n
Each charge carries a maximum of 25 years in prison.<\/p>\n
At Sydney airport, a 32-year-old woman was arrested and was expected to be charged with two offences, including being a member of a \u200bterrorist \u200borganisation, both of which carry a maximum jail term \u200bof 10 years.<\/p>\n
“The safety of the \u200ccommunity is the number one priority for all agencies involved,” Nutt said, adding preparations for the women’s return began as early as 2015.<\/p>\n
He declined to comment on the status of the fourth woman or the children.<\/p>\n
The AFP earlier said the children were expected to enter community reintegration and support programmes.<\/p>\n
Some Australian women travelled to Syria between 2012 and 2016 to join their \u200chusbands, who had allegedly become ISIS members.<\/p>\n
Following ISIS’s territorial \u200bdefeat in 2019, many relatives of suspected fighters were \u200bdetained in camps, including al-Roj in \u200bthe northeast of the country where the latest Australian returnees were held, \u200caccording to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.<\/p>\n
In January, \u200bthe United States began moving \u200bdetained ISIS members out of Syria after the collapse of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which had been guarding around a dozen facilities holding fighters and affiliated civilians, \u200bincluding foreigners.<\/p>\n
The Australian government repatriated \u200cfour women and 13 children from Syrian camps in 2022. About 21 Australians \u200bremain in al-Roj, the ABC reported.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Renju Jose and Alasdair Pal in \u200bSydney; Editing by Kate Mayberry and Alex Richardson)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Renju Jose and Alasdair Pal SYDNEY, May 7 (Reuters) – Three Australian women linked to the extremist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[35683,34878,32768,34968,279,35682,95],"class_list":{"0":"post-102461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-syria","8":"tag-australian-broadcasting-corporation","9":"tag-australian-federal-police","10":"tag-australian-government","11":"tag-australian-women","12":"tag-islamic-state","13":"tag-sydney-airport","14":"tag-syria"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116533808461256776","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}