The family of an ISIS bride barred from returning to Australia is preparing an urgent legal challenge in a bid to overturn a federal government order preventing her return from Syria.
According to media reports, western Sydney woman Hodan Abby has been blocked from boarding a flight to Australia under a Temporary Exclusion Order.
Ms Abby and her daughter had reportedly secured plane tickets and hoped to return to Australia with the rest of the cohort, but she was prevented from boarding.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke imposed the two-year TEO on Ms Abby in February.
Ms Abby’s daughter was not subject to the exclusion order and could have returned to Australia this week with the rest of the group, however Ms Abby reportedly chose not to send her back alone.
The nine-year-old suffers from significant disabilities caused by shrapnel wounds she sustained in Syria as a baby.
The child has shrapnel in her head, neck and hip which has caused delayed speech and development, and Ms Abby also has a piece of shrapnel in her chest, according to Nine Newspapers.
Ms Abby left her western Sydney home with a friend at age 18 and travelled to Syria in 2015 after telling their families they were going on holiday.
The young women were reportedly hoping to become jihadi brides. Ms Abby’s friend was killed in Syria in 2015.
Ms Abby’s family has now engaged Birchgrove Legal principal solicitor Moustafa Kheir to challenge the TEO, according to The Australian.
The legal challenge comes as another group of Australian women and children linked to ISIS is due to land in Australia tonight.
Mr Burke on Tuesday confirmed seven women and 12 children had boarded a flight in Damascus on Monday night.
Two women, Kawsar Kanj and Kirsty Rosse-Emile, will land in Melbourne with seven children at 5.15pm.
The other four women – Hyam Raad, Nesrine Zahab, Amina Zahab and Sumaya Zahab – are expected to land in Sydney on a Qatar Airways flight from Doha with their six children at 5.25pm.
The group departed the al-Roj detention camp in northeast Syria earlier this week after urgent negotiations involving Kurdish and Syrian authorities, according to The Australian.
“The government has not and will not provide any assistance to this group,” Mr Burke said in a statement.
“These are people who have made the horrific choice to join a dangerous terrorist organisation and to place their children in an unspeakable situation.”
Mr Burke said any returnees who had committed crimes could expect “the full force of the law”.
“Our world-class law enforcement and intelligence agencies have been preparing for their return since 2014 and have longstanding plans in place to manage and monitor them,” he said.
Those returning to Australia on Tuesday include Kirsty Rosse-Emile, from Melbourne, who travelled to Syria in 2014 aged 19 with her older husband, Moroccan-born Australian Nabil Kadmiry.
Kadmiry became an Islamic State fighter and was stripped of Australian citizenship in 2019. He is believed to remain detained in a Kurdish prison.
Ms Rosse-Emile will land in Melbourne tonight with her two surviving children Yahya and Amirah, who suffered frostbite injuries while living in camp conditions. Another child, Lukman, died in Syria.
Kawsar Kanj is also returning to Melbourne with five children.
Hyam Raad will land in Sydney on Monday with her two children.
She is on the same flight as family matriarch Amina Zahab, from one of Australia’s most prominent ISIS-linked family networks.
Amina followed family members to Syria after her son Muhammad became one of Australia’s most notorious ISIS recruiters.
In multiple media interviews over the years, she has publicly expressed regret about the family’s move to Syria and described horrific conditions inside the camps.
Speaking from Al-Hol camp in 2019, she said the family had placed “too much trust” in their children.
Amina is also the mother of Sumaya Zahab and the aunt of Nesrine Zahab, who are returning to Australia today.
Sumaya is believed to be in her early 30s.
Nesrine travelled to Syria in her early 20s and later married Australian ISIS fighter Ahmed Merhi, who reportedly lost a leg and is believed to be imprisoned in Baghdad.
She gave birth to a son, Abdul Rahman, in 2018.
She has repeatedly claimed she unknowingly crossed into Syria during a family trip to Lebanon and later became trapped there.
The effort to bring the remaining women and children out of Syria has reportedly been spearheaded by retired Sydney lawyer and humanitarian campaigner Robert Van Aalst, who is on one of the flights back to Australia, with the women and children, today.
Mr Van Aalst has reportedly played a central behind-the-scenes role coordinating communications between families, intermediaries and overseas contacts during the operation to extract the women and children from the al-Roj detention camp.
Mr Van Aalst, who describes himself online as a human rights advocate with more than 40 years of legal experience, has spent years campaigning for the repatriation of Australian women and children trapped in Kurdish-run camps in northeast Syria.
In a 2022 interview with ABC Radio National, Mr Van Aalst said many of the women had been trying to return home almost immediately after arriving in Syria.
“These young women were very vulnerable when they were convinced to leave Australia and go to Syria,” he said.
“Like so many youngsters that get attracted to cults, they did not know the consequences of what they were doing.
“Most of them were telling us, ‘Please get us home, this has been an awful mistake’.”
He argued the women and children should be viewed primarily as Australian citizens trapped in a dire situation rather than solely as security threats.
“These women have experienced four years of war, they’ve experienced nearly three years of being in internment camps like hell on earth,” he said.
“The one thing that they’ve done is shown complete resilience, compliance to the authorities, and have protected their children.
“The children, one hopes – once they go to school, meet new friends, join clubs – they become just like every other young child.”
Earlier this month, four Australian women and nine children returned from Syria.
Three of the women were arrested upon arrival.
Sydney woman Janai Safar was charged with joining a terrorist organisation and travelling to a declared conflict zone.
Melbourne grandmother Kawsar Abbas and her daughter Zeinab Ahmad were charged with slavery-related offences, including allegations linked to the enslavement of Yazidi women while in Syria.
A fourth woman, Zahra Ahmad, was released without charge.
It is unclear whether any of the women returning tonight will face criminal charges.
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