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IS-linked women, children return to Australia / Photo: WILLIAM WEST - AFP
IS-linked women, children return to Australia
A group of seven women and 12 children linked to suspected Islamic State fighters returned to Australia on Tuesday after years in Syria, police said.
The so-called "ISIS brides" are Australian nationals. They left the Roj camp, controlled by Syrian Kurdish forces, last week and arrived in Melbourne and Sydney from Qatar.
In a statement following their landing, Australia's federal police said none of the cohort had been charged with an offence upon arrival.
Their belongings were searched and their devices were checked "for investigative purposes", police said.
"Investigations into the activities of Australians who travelled to Syria -- including those who have since returned -- are ongoing," they added.
Australian officials have stressed the group did not receive any assistance from Canberra.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said "any members of this cohort who have committed crimes can expect to face the full force of the law".
"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 said.
This month, 13 more IS-linked Australians -- four women and their nine children -- flew home from Syria.
Two of the women, a mother and a daughter, were arrested on arrival in Melbourne.
Police accused them of having kept a woman as a slave after travelling to Syria in 2014 to support the Islamic State group.
They had been detained by Kurdish forces in 2019.
A third woman was also arrested on arrival in Sydney and charged with entering a restricted area and joining a "terrorist organisation".
There are now no Australians remaining in the Roj camp, an official told AFP last week.
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.
Widely known as the "ISIS brides", the case has stirred strong debate in Australia.
Australia's Human Rights Commission urged the government in March to help repatriate those still there.
But others have accused the women of turning their back on Australia and believe they should be left to face the consequences.
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.Schubert--BlnAP
