‘Horrific choice’ — Ex-ISIS camp detainees arrive in Australia

Australia’s home affairs minister condemned those who chose to travel to Syria to join the terror group.

By World Israel News Staff

A group of Australian nationals who had spent years in a Kurdish-administered Al-Roj internment camp in Syria for foreigners linked to the ISIS terror organization arrived in Australia on Tuesday.

The group — consisting of six women and 13 children — was not arrested upon arrival, with some landing in Sydney and others arriving in Melbourne.

Although the returnees were not immediately detained, the Australian Federal Police said investigations into their activities are ongoing and warned that anyone found to have committed crimes while in Syria could face prosecution.

“These are people who have made the horrific choice to join a dangerous terrorist organization and to place their children in an unspeakable situation,” Australia’s minister for home affairs, Tony Burke, said in a statement.

The sister of Kirsty Rosse-Emile, one of the women who arrived in Melbourne, told 7News that she requires “a lot of support — like just to talk to someone, someone to talk to about what’s happened.”

She said her sister had been groomed online at age 14 and later traveled to Syria to marry a man who then became an ISIS terrorist.

Sydney-based physician Jamal Rifi described the repatriation effort as a major breakthrough after years of lobbying both Syrian and Australian authorities to allow the women and children to return home.

“We were able to convince the Syrian government about the plight of those children and the fact that the political rhetoric in Australia does not reflect the legal reality — that those are Australian citizens, they should be back, and the majority are children, they are innocent,” he told the ABC’s 7.30 program.

“We convinced them that if any of these women … have anything that broke Australian law, then we have the court system, and they will go through that,” he added.

Earlier in May, another group consisting of four women and 13 children also returned to Australia from Syria.

According to media reports, three of those women were arrested at the airport upon arrival.