Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that his government will not repatriate Australian women and children from Syria who have been identified as relatives of suspected ISIL (ISIS) fighters.
“We have a very firm view that we won’t be providing assistance or repatriation,” Albanese told ABC News on Tuesday.
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Albanese said that while it is “unfortunate” that children have been affected, Australia is “not providing any support”.
“As my mother would say, you make your bed, you lie in it,” he said.
“We have no sympathy, frankly, for people who travelled overseas in order to participate in what was an attempt to establish a caliphate to undermine and destroy our way of life,” he added.
A spokesperson for Australian Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke also warned that those who return to Australia from Syria will face the law if they have committed crimes.
“People in this cohort need to know that if they have committed a crime and if they return to Australia, they will be met with the full force of the law,” the spokesperson said, according to the Reuters news agency.
A total of 34 women and children holding Australian citizenship were released on Monday from the Kurdish-controlled Roj detention camp in northern Syria.
The Australians, who are said to be relatives of ISIL fighters, were later returned to the camp due to what was described as “technical reasons”, the Reuters and AFP news agencies reported.
Roj detention camp director Hakmiyeh Ibrahim told Al Jazeera that the women and children from 11 families were handed over to relatives “who have come from Australia to collect them”.
The women and children were seen boarding minibuses to reach the Syrian capital, Damascus, from where they were to depart for Australia.
But halfway through the trip, Kurdish escorts were ordered to turn back, as the group did not have permission “to enter government-held territory”, according to Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett, w