Australia bans a citizen with alleged IS links from returning from Syria : NPR

Family members of suspected Islamic State militants who are Australian nationals board 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/AP

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Baderkhan Ahmad/AP/AP

MELBOURNE, Australia — The Australian government has barred an Australian citizen with alleged links to the Islamic State militant group from returning home from a detention camp in Syria, the latest development in a difficult case of repatriating families of ISIS fighters.

The woman planned to join 33 other Australians – 10 women and 23 children – and take a flight on Monday from Damascus, Syria, to Australia, Interior Minister Tony Burke said on Wednesday.

But the group was turned back by Syrian authorities to the Roj detention camp, due to unspecified procedural problems.

The Australian government acted on news that the group was planning to leave Syria, Burke said. He said the woman, whom he did not identify, was placed under a temporary exclusion order on Monday and his lawyers received the documents on Wednesday.

She was an immigrant who left Australia for Syria between 2013 and 2015, Burke said, declining to specify whether she had had children – although he generally blamed parents for the difficulties of their offspring stranded in Syria.

“These are horrible situations that were caused to these children by the actions of their parents. They are terrible situations. But they were entirely caused by horrible decisions made by their parents,” Burke told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Burke has the power to use temporary exclusion orders to prevent high-risk citizens from returning to Australia for up to two years.

The laws were introduced in 2019 to prevent defeated Islamic State fighters from returning to Australia. There are no public reports of any order being issued previously.

Burke said security agencies had not indicated that any of the other Australians in the group deserved exclusion. Such orders cannot be made against children under the age of 14.

Confusing messages in a cramped camp

Family members of suspected Islamic State militants who are Australian nationals walk towards a van bound for 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/AP

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Baderkhan Ahmad/AP/AP

In the Roj camp, nestled in northeastern Syria near the border with Iraq, Australian women who were planning to return home refused to speak to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

One of the women, Zeinab Ahmad, said her lawyer had advised her not to speak to journalists.

A security official at the camp, Chavrê Rojava, said family members of the detainees – who she said were Australians of Lebanese origin – had traveled to Syria to arrange their return. They brought temporary passports that had been issued to potential returnees, Rojava said.

“We have no contact with the Australian government on this because we are not part of the process,” she said. “We left it up to the families to sort this out.”

Rojava said that after the group left the camp to travel to Damascus, they were contacted by a Syrian government official and warned to turn back. The families were “very disappointed” when they returned to the camp, she said.

“We recently requested that all countries and all families come and take back their citizens,” Rojava said.

She added that Syrian authorities do not want to see “a repeat of what happened in al-Hol camp” – a much larger camp, also located in northeastern Syria, that once housed tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children, with suspected links to ISIS.

Last month, during fighting between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which controlled al-Hol, guards abandoned their posts and many camp residents fled.

This has raised fears that IS members could regroup and stage new attacks in Syria.

The Syrian government then took control of al-Hol and began moving the remaining residents to another camp in Aleppo province. Kurdish-led forces still control the Roj camp and a ceasefire is now in effect.

The thorny issue of repatriating foreign citizens linked to ISIS

Former Islamic State fighters from several countries, their wives and children have been held in camps since the militant group lost control of its territory in Syria in 2019. Although defeated, the group still has sleeper cells that carry out deadly attacks in Syria and Iraq.

Australian governments have twice repatriated Australian women and children from Syrian detention camps. Other Australians have also returned without government assistance.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reiterated on Wednesday his position announced the day before, according to which his government would not help repatriate the last group.

“These are people who have chosen to go abroad to align themselves with an ideology that is the caliphate, which is a brutal, reactionary ideology that seeks to undermine and destroy our way of life,” Albanese told reporters.

He was referring to the militants’ capture of large swaths of territory more than a decade ago that stretched across Syria and Iraq, territory where ISIS established its so-called caliphate. Foreign jihadists then went to Syria to join ISIS. Over the years, they started a family and raised children there.

“We’re not doing anything to repatriate or help these people. I think it’s unfortunate that children are involved in this, it’s not their decision, but it’s their parents’ or their mother’s decision,” Albanese added.