Three women linked to Islamic State arrested in Australia on return from Syria

Three women with links to the jihadist Islamic State (IS) group have been arrested on returning home to Australia following years in detention in Syria.

All are Australian citizens. Police said they arrested two of them - Kawsar Abbas, 53, and Zeinab Ahmed, 31 - on arrival in Melbourne. Janai Safar, 32, was arrested after landing in Sydney.

A fourth woman in the party, which includes nine children, was not arrested.

The group are the subject of heated political debate in Australia, with the government saying it would give them no help to return. The children - thought to be aged from about six to their mid-teens - are to get psychological support and be assessed for possible radicalisation.

Australia is one of a number of countries grappling with how to deal with the return of citizens - and their children - from Syria after the so-called Islamic State caliphate was destroyed in 2019.

Tens of thousands of foreigners, most of them under 18, have been held in life-threatening conditions in IS camps across Syria, human rights groups say.

The group that arrived in Melbourne had been held in al-Roj camp since 2019. It included grandmother Kawsar Abbas and her adult daughter Zeinab Ahmed, reportedly as well as another daughter Zahra Ahmed, and their eight children.

Kawsar Abbas is married to Mohammad Ahmad, who ran a charity that Australian police suspect was used to send cash to IS. He denied the accusation in an interview with the national broadcaster ABC in 2019, after it tracked him down to a prison in Syria.

Before the Qatar Airways flight carrying the women and children arrived from Doha late on Thursday afternoon, a group of about 15 men dressed predominantly in black had gathered in the international arrivals area of Melbourne airport.

When the only one of the women who had not been arrested emerged, the group swarmed around attempting to cover her face from the dozens of TV camera crew and photographers as they escorted her from the terminal.

She is believed to be Zahra Ahmed - the widow of notorious Islamic State recruiter Muhammad Zahab, whom she married in Syria. He died in an air strike in 2018.

The group was bundled into a white minibus and driven away.

Janai Safar, who flew into Sydney, was accompanied by her nine-year-old son, who was born in Syria.

Police boarded the plane and took her into custody on arrival, Australian media reported. The Age newspaper showed pictures of her being escorted from Sydney airport by police in a vehicle.

Safar is a former Sydney nursing student who travelled to Syria in 2015 and reportedly married an IS fighter.

In an interview with the Australian newspaper in 2019 she said it had been her own decision to go to Syria and that she did not want to return to Australia for fear of being arrested and having her child taken from her.

On Wednesday police commissioner Krissy Barratt confirmed some of the women would be arrested and charged. The potential charges included terrorism offences such as entering, or remaining in, declared areas, and crimes against humanity offences, such as engaging in slave trading.

The group of 13 are part of a larger cohort of 34 believed to include wives, widows and children of IS fighters who left the camp in February but returned for "technical reasons", with the Australian government refusing to officially repatriate them.

One member of the cohort was banned from returning to Australia earlier this year when the government issued a "temporary exclusion order", meaning they cannot return for up to two years. That person is not among the group that landed on Thursday.

Boarding a connecting flight to Melbourne in Doha, the women told a reporter for the national broadcaster ABC they were excited to return home, saying Australia was "like paradise" to them.

"We just want our children to be safe. It was like hell [in Syria] for them," one said.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Australia had become aware that the women were to return home on Wednesday, when tickets were booked.

"These are people who have made the horrific choice to join a dangerous terrorist organisation and to place their children in an unspeakable situation," he told reporters, adding that "any members of this cohort who have committed crimes can expect to face the full force of the law."

The government had been preparing for the group's return since 2014, Burke said, with "long-standing plans" to "manage and monitor them".

The head of Australia's spy agency, Mike Burgess, said he was not "concerned immediately" by the group's return but "they will get our attention as you'd expect".

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allen said children returning to her state would be "asked to undertake countering violent extremism programs. That is appropriate."