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Urgent calls to repatriate ‘terrorized’ Australian women and children from Syria

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Urgent calls to repatriate ‘terrorized’ Australian women and children from Syria

A new push to bring home Australian women and children detained in Kurdish-controlled Syria has been given greater urgency. say family members and a children’s rights group.
The 42 Australian citizens are being held in camps in a northeastern part of Syria controlled by US-backed Kurdish forces. This region was not taken by the rebel forces that captured the capital, Damascus.
The future of the Kurdish-controlled region, however, is uncertain but faces potential threats from Islamist rebels and their Turkish backers.

Türkiye has long targeted Syrian Kurdish forces with airstrikes, claiming they are aligned with a Turkish-Kurdish independence movement.

Kamalle Dabboussy, whose daughter and grandchildren were repatriated from Syria in 2022, says the Australian women and children left there are “terrified”.
“They fear for their lives; the fear is palpable,” he says.
Dabboussy says women are “reporting a reduction in the number of guards” at their al-Roj detention camp, where guards are believed to be being redeployed to reinforce Kurdish defenses elsewhere.
Save the Children Australia chief executive Mat Tinkler says he is “deeply concerned” by the deteriorating security situation.
“For years we have urged the Australian government to act before it is too late,” he said.

“We urge the Australian Government to arrange for the immediate repatriation of the group before the situation becomes even more volatile.”

Preteen boy with short dark hair looking directly at the camera

Born in Australia, Mohammad was two years old when his family took him to Syria. Living in a camp for families of IS fighters, he risks being separated from his mother and younger siblings as he approaches puberty. Fountain: S.B.S. / Deadline

Sources close to the families say the Australian government has intervened to ensure the relative safety of two Australian children by requesting that they remain in the care of their mothers in the countryside.

The two boys are 12 years old or older and are at risk of being transferred to men’s prisons.
Human Rights Watch has documented that children are routinely placed in “rehabilitation centers” or adult prisons once they become adolescents.
Dabboussy says that with fewer Kurdish guards in the camp, the risk of children being taken away is greater.
In February, Mohammad, in the al-Roj camp.
Their mother, Zahra Ahmad, shared at the time her fears of losing her children.
“If they take them away from me, I may never see them again,” he told Dateline.
“I can’t let that happen to my children.

“They’re innocent. They haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t think they should be punished for something they didn’t even have anything to do with.”

A middle-aged man dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt posing for a photo inside a workshop

Abraham Abbas is deeply concerned for his 13 family members in the camp in northeastern Syria. Fountain: supplied / Ben Partridge

Zahra Ahmad’s uncle in Melbourne, Abraham Abbas, is devastated with worry for his 13 family members in the camp.

He says his “main concern would be that the rebels take control of the countryside.”
“We are thinking about them day and night, and especially the children. Until they are safe, I don’t think we can rest.”

“I would like the Australian government to… repatriate them as soon as possible,” he says.

Originally from suburban Melbourne, the circumstances of how Zahra Ahmad’s extended family arrived in Syria are controversial.
Some male members of her family reportedly joined the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) group, but Zahra maintains that the women had no choice but to follow.
“I didn’t make this bed,” he said.
When By US-backed Kurdish forces, surviving women and children were detained in camps, while men and teenagers were sent to prisons.
In October 2022, the Albanian government from the al-Roj camp.
But 14 Australian women and 28 children remained in Syria.

In 2023, Save the Children Australia took the Australian government to the Federal Court to force it to repatriate the remaining Australians, but lost the case.

At a press conference on Monday, SBS News asked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese if efforts were being made to remove the remaining Australian children.
He said he had been “briefed” about Syria, but that at “this stage, there is no change to the assessment that has been made there.”
Kurdish ruling forces have long called on countries like Australia to repatriate their citizens, arguing that protecting foreigners diverts their forces from other needs.
The SBS has also counted 13 Australian men detained in northeast Syria, bringing the total number of known Australians detained in the region to 55.
Now 21 years old, he was separated from his mother when he was 15 and imprisoned as an unaccompanied minor alongside adult IS fighters. It is understood that his situation has not changed.
Zahab, originally from the Sydney suburb of Bankstown, says and fears dying in prison.
Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin, former UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, previously reported that there is an undercount of people arbitrarily detained in northeastern Syria, where their conditions of confinement include overcrowding, rampant tuberculosis and torture physics.
A Kurdish spokesman has previously denied any mistreatment of prisoners.
Watch Dateline’s award-winning documentary about Australians held indefinitely in northeast Syria.

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