Eight Australian offspring of two slain Islamic State (IS) group fighters had been removed from Syria in Australia’s first organized repatriation from the conflict zone, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said yesterday.]
The eight children being repatriated were in the care of Australian government officials, Morrison said, adding that he would not identify the children or say when they would reach Australia.
Media reported that they include five children and grandchildren of Sydney-born convicted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf and three children of Islamic State group fighter Yasin Rizvic, from Melbourne.
Both men and their wives died in the conflict zone.
The children had been taken by an aid agency on Sunday to Iraq, the Australian newspaper reported.
“The opportunity now is for these young children who are coming back to Australia, they can’t be held responsible for the crimes of their parents,” Morrison told reporters.
The children would be provided with support services, so that “they can fully integrate into a happy life in Australia,” Morrison said.
“They’ve got off to a horrible start in life as a result of the appalling decisions of their parents and they’ll find their home in Australia and I’m sure they’ll be embraced by Australians and as a result of that embrace, I’m sure they’ll live positive and happy lives,” he added.
Morrison had for months said he would not risk any Australian official to rescue Australians from Islamic State group-held territory.
Critics had argued that he had not been prepared to take the political risk of repatriating families of Islamic extremists until he won a narrow election victory on May 18.
Morrison yesterday said he had kept his government’s efforts “very low-key” in the interests of the safety of everyone involved, including the aid agencies that had helped the government.
Sharrouf’s mother-in-law, Karen Nettleton, who is based in Sydney, has launched several attempts to rescue the children from Syria and has led the campaign for Australian government intervention.
Her lawyer, Robert Van Aalst, said he hoped Nettleton was with the children in Iraq, but had no direct communication with her due to security concerns.
The eldest child, Zaynab, turned 18 last week and has been expecting her third child.
Australian Broadcasting Corp reported she had yet to give birth.
Zaynab would return to Australia with the newborn, her two children — Ayesha, 3, and Fatima, 2 — her 16-year-old sister Hoda, and her eight-year-old brother, Humzeh.
“There will be medical examinations and various other support provided by the government which they have told us about to help the children acclimatize,” Van Aalst told ABC.
“There are also some wounds that may need to be attended to. Young Hoda was wounded in the leg. Zaynab, I believe, had shrapnel wounds. It is not just physical wounds that have to be looked into, but there is some other psychological issues, no doubt, that will have to be looked into,” he added.
The Rizvic children are two boys and a girl aged between 6 and 12, the Australian reported.
Clarke Jones, an Australian National University criminologist who specializes in radicalization, said the children would need treatment for trauma and could be radicalized.
They could also be threatened by elements of the Australian community.
“There are a lot of people who don’t want them back at all,” Jones said. “Because of that, they would also be under threat.”
Australian National University counterterrorism researcher Jacinta Carroll wrote in a research paper last week that Zaynab had become both a victim and supporter of terrorism in a case that was legally and morally complex.
Zaynab became a prominent Islamic State group propagandist making social media posts supporting atrocities and the activities of her father and her husband, Mohamed Elomar, an Australian Islamic State group fighter who was killed while she was pregnant in 2015, Carroll said.
She had lived a relatively privileged life under the Islamic State regime in Syria in a house with slaves, posting photographs of herself with other veiled women with assault rifles and a luxury BMW sedan.
Carroll said disengagement services, also known as deradicalization programs, were available in Australia to help the children integrate into the mainstream Australian community.
“I think that will be very challenging for the Sharroufs,” Carroll said. “The profile and the publicity around this family will also make it quite problematic for them to just integrate back into normal life in Australia.”
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday announced a deal with the chief of Kurdish-led forces that includes a ceasefire, after government troops advanced across Kurdish-held areas of the country’s north and east. Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said he had agreed to the deal to avoid a broader war. He made the decision after deadly clashes in the Syrian city of Raqa on Sunday between Kurdish-led forces and local fighters loyal to Damascus, and fighting this month between the Kurds and government forces. The agreement would also see the Kurdish administration and forces integrate into the state after months of stalled negotiations on
RSS