Australian ISIS family members brought home from NE Syria
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – On Thursday, the first batch of Australian nationals, including children and women, of family members of the Islamic State Organization (ISIS) was brought home from a camp in northeast Syria.
On Friday, Australian Broadcasting Corp said, “Four women and 13 children were taken from the camp on Thursday afternoon,” after being transformed to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).
The Australian women and the children have been held in the second-most dangerous Roj Camp south of Derik, northeast Syria, since 2019.
Roj is one of several detention camps in northeast Syria holds about 727 families, numbering 2.310 individuals including 1.582 children.
Those repatriated were assessed by Australian officials as being “the most vulnerable” of the 60 Australian nationals held in the camp, according to the website.
The repatriation was concluded based on assistance between Australian authorities and the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES).
On October 15, the authorities took DNA samples from the nationals to prove they are Australians, the website added.
A spokesperson for Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil refused to comment of the issue due to its sensitivity.
Save the Children Australia CEO Mat Tinkler said it was an important milestone in a “long and heart-wrenching journey” for the children and their families.
Early in October, the Australian Cabinet’s national security committee met to approve “a rescue plan to repatriate more than a dozen families,” Dailymail, a British daily newspaper, reported.
The former ADF intelligence analyst, Shane Healey, said that the Australian government would transfer nationals from northeast Syria to a third hosting country “somewhere in the Middle East,” before being brought home.
On October 25, Canada’s Ministry of Global Affairs repatriated four nationals, Two women and two children, of the ISIS family members from camps in northeastern Syria.
After Baghouz, thousands of ISIS fighters were transferred to prisons, while their families were transferred to Hawl and Roj camps in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) areas.
The issue of ISIS families, hail from more than 60 nationalities, constitutes an ongoing and challenging issue on the non-internationally recognized AANES, which repeatedly demands the concerned countries to repatriate their national.
The AANES also calls on the international powers to provide support for establishing rehabilitation centers and help in tackling the security situation in the facilities were foreign nationals stay.
Despite these repeated calls the majority of countries, including those participating in the Global Coalition, refuse to repatriate their nationals.