Australia Bans ISIS Jihadist Held in Syrian Camp from Returning Home
Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said on Wednesday his office had issued a “temporary exclusion order” against one of 34 Australian citizens linked to Islamic State and held in Syrian camps for years.
The Syrian government is eager to repatriate as many long-imprisoned activists as possible, after resuming custody of the camps from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The saga of the 34 Australian returnees began on Monday, when they released from the Roj prison camp in Syria, a vast complex that has held more than 2,000 ISIS prisoners from 40 different countries since 2019.
According to camp authorities, those detained at Roj were mostly the wives and children of ISIS fighters. Their final fate has been uncertain since the collapse of the Islamic State “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq, as their home countries are reluctant to repatriate them, viewing many of them as continuing security risks.
The task of warehousing ISIS brides fell to the SDF, the militia of Syria’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. The SDF was an important Western ally in the fight against the Islamic State, but after the autumn After the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in late 2024, the Kurds found themselves at odds with the new US-backed government in Damascus.
These tensions broke out in late 2025, when the SDF clashed with Syrian government troops in a conflict that spread from the divided city of Aleppo. A ceasefire was brokered by the United States in January, with the aim of fully integrating the SDF into the central government and military.
The SDF was forced to withdraw from the ISIS prison camps it had long maintained, turning the prisoners into a political ball that could no longer be played on. The United States oversaw a transfer of the most dangerous detainees in secure centers in Iraq, while Damascus exhorted other governments to repatriate the least threatened prisoners.
Australian Prime Minister Antony Albanese flatly refused to take back Australian citizens detained in Syria, but his government later suggested it might be willing to transfer some of them to Australian prisons.
“People in this cohort need to know that if they have committed a crime and return to Australia, they will face the full force of the law. The safety of Australians and the protection of Australia’s national interests remain the top priority,” the Albanian administration said on Monday, announcing the release of 34 Australian nationals into the custody of family members from the Roj camp.
The detainees were quickly returned to the camp for unspecified “technical reasons”, even though they had already boarded buses to Damascus.
Tuesday, Albanese reiterated its strong stance against “assistance or repatriation”. Opposition politicians agreed that people who embraced Islamic State’s extremist ideology should never be allowed to return.
On Wednesday, the Australian government’s refusal to accept “IS brides” appeared to ease – with one anonymous exception.
“I can confirm that one person from this cohort has been subject to a temporary exclusion order, which was taken on the advice of security agencies,” Home Secretary Burke said. said in a press release Wednesday.
Burke added that the security services “have not yet indicated” whether any of the other 33 potential returnees should face a similar ban. The legal authority cited for the ban was a relatively obscure clause in a 2019 law that has never been used before.
Albanese insisted his government would not support the return of detainees aligned with a “brutal and reactionary ideology” that “seeks to undermine and destroy our way of life”.
“It’s unfortunate that children are involved in this, it’s not their decision, but it’s their parents’ or their mother’s decision,” he said on Wednesday.
One of the unmentioned factors in Albanese’s hesitant stance appears to be the growing popularity of the populist, anti-migration One Nation party, which has hammered its government for even considering accepting Islamic State prisoners from Syria.
On Tuesday, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson required an explicit and permanent ban on the return of Islamic State militants, including “IS brides.”
“They made their bed, now it’s time for them to lie in it,” she said. “These people traveled to a war-torn country to support their terrorist husbands. They have no place in our society.”
“The government claims it can do nothing to prevent their return. This is absurd,” she continued. “The government could issue a temporary exclusion order, or even cancel their passports and refuse to issue travel documents. They have done nothing to prevent the return of these supporters of terrorism.”
Hanson then accused Burke of going soft on ISIS brides because he was “caught receiving campaign aid from the leader of the Muslim community who allegedly coordinated the return from Australia.”
Hanson was referring to Burke close association with Dr. Jamal Rifi, a long-time friend and supporter. Rifi, a Lebanese Muslim, played a leading role in efforts to repatriate detainees from Syria.
Interestingly, some of Albanese’s latest statements on the issue of repatriation are identical to Hanson’s comments, even borrowing some of his exact words – he said “if you make your bed, you lie in it” in an ABC radio interview on Tuesday – but the Sydney Morning Herald quoted The baffled governor of Roj prison camp insists the Albanian government has quietly “issued passports and necessary documents” to all Australian citizens held in the camp.
