Australia won’t repatriate 34 women and children from Syria : NPR
Family members of suspected Islamic State militants who are Australian nationals sit in a van heading to Damascus airport during the first repatriation operation of the year, at Roj camp in eastern Syria, Monday, February 16, 2026. Thirty-four Australian citizens from 11 families left the camp.
Baderkhan Ahmad/AP
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Baderkhan Ahmad/AP
MELBOURNE, Australia — The Australian government will not repatriate a group of 34 women and children with suspected links to the Islamic State group from Syria, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday.
The women and children of 11 families were supposed to fly from the Syrian capital Damascus to Australia, but Syrian authorities sent them back to the Roj camp in northeastern Syria on Monday due to procedural problems, officials said.
Only two groups of Australians have been repatriated with government assistance from Syrian camps since the fall of the Islamic State group in 2019. Other Australians have also returned without government assistance.
Albanese would not comment on reports that the remaining women and children had Australian passports.
“We are providing absolutely no support and we are not repatriating people,” Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp. in Melbourne.
“Frankly, we have no sympathy for the people who traveled overseas to participate in what was an attempt to establish a caliphate to undermine, destroy, our way of life. And so, as my mother would say, ‘You make your bed, you lie in it,'” Albanese added.
Albanese pointed out that international child protection charity Save the Children had failed to establish in Australian courts that the Australian government had a responsibility to repatriate citizens from Syrian camps.
After the federal court ruled in favor of the government in 2024, Save the Children Australia chief executive Mat Tinkler argued the government had a moral, if not legal, obligation to repatriate families.
Albanese said if the latest group traveled to Australia without government assistance they could be charged.
Between 2014 and 2017, traveling without a legitimate reason to the former Islamic State stronghold of al-Raqqa province was an offense under Australian law. The maximum sentence was 10 years in prison.
“It’s unfortunate that children are also affected by this, but we are not providing any support. And if anyone does find their way back to Australia, they will face the full punishment of the law, if any law has been broken,” Albanese added.
The last group of Australians repatriated from Syrian camps arrived in Sydney in October 2022.
They were four mothers, former companions of Islamic State supporters, and 13 children.
Australian authorities had assessed this group as the most vulnerable among the 60 Australian women and children detained in the Roj camp, the government said at the time.
Eight descendants of two slain Australian Islamic State fighters were repatriated from Syria in 2019 by the conservative government that preceded Albanese’s center-left Labor Party administration.
The issue of Islamic State supporters resurfaced in Australia following the killing of 15 people at a Jewish party at Bondi Beach on December 14. The attackers were believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
