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<\/p>\nRights groups protest but government says \u2018ISIS brides\u2019 should face consequences<\/p>\n
PUBLISHED : 28 May 2026 at 12:00<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPeople walk around at Camp Roj, where relatives of people suspected of belonging to the Islamic State group are held in the countryside near al-Malikiyah in the northeastern Hasakah province of Syria, on Oct 8, 2023. (Photo: AFP)\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
SYDNEY – Australian police have charged a woman linked to the Islamic State group with membership of a terrorist organisation and entering a known conflict zone.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of women from Western nations were lured to the Middle East as IS gained prominence in the early 2010s, in many cases following husbands who had signed up as jihadist fighters.<\/p>\n
A joint counter-terror police team said they will allege that the woman, 34, travelled to Syria between 2013 and 2014 with a man to join Islamic State.<\/p>\n
The man is now believed to be imprisoned in the Middle East, they added.<\/p>\n
The woman was then detained by Kurdish forces in 2019 and held in the al-Hawl Internally Displaced Persons camp until returning to Australia in September last year, they said.<\/p>\n
She will face court on Thursday, police said.\u00a0Both charges carry a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison.<\/p>\n
Her arrest follows the return to Australia this month of a number of women and children linked to suspected Islamic State fighters.<\/p>\n
Two women, a mother and a daughter, were arrested on arrival in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Police accused them of having kept a woman as a slave after travelling to Syria in 2014 to support the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n
A third woman was also arrested on arrival in Sydney and charged with entering a restricted area and joining a terrorist organisation.<\/p>\n
This week, 13 more IS-linked Australians \u2014 four women and their nine children \u2014 flew home from Syria.<\/p>\n
In a statement following their landing, Australia\u2019s federal police said none of the cohort had been charged with an offence.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important to note that a period of time without charges being laid is not an indicator that investigations have ceased,\u201d Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner National Security Investigations Hilda Sirec said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cInvestigations are continuing into all the recent adult female returnees from Syrian camps,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
\u2018ISIS brides\u2019<\/p>\n
Widely known as the \u201cISIS brides\u201d, the case has stirred strong debate in Australia.<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s Human Rights Commission urged the government in March to help repatriate those still there.<\/p>\n
But others have accused the women of turning their back on Australia and believe they should be left to face the consequences.<\/p>\n
Once in control of swathes of Syria and Iraq, IS was territorially defeated in 2019 in a battle spearheaded by Kurdish-led forces with support from a US-led international coalition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rights groups protest but government says \u2018ISIS brides\u2019 should face consequences PUBLISHED : 28 May 2026 at 12:00…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[44780,44778,34878,32310,279,1686,95,44779,37172],"class_list":["post-134431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-syria","tag-al-hawl-camp","tag-australia-counter-terrorism","tag-australian-federal-police","tag-foreign-fighters","tag-islamic-state","tag-national-security","tag-syria","tag-syria-repatriation","tag-terrorism-charges"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116651116862069152","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134431","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=134431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}