ISIS bride acted ‘like deputy’ to abusive father after family bought teen slave, police claim
A Melbourne family accused of buying a teenage slave captured by the Islamic State for $10,000 knew he was being bought for sex and housework in a house where guns and terror flags were displayed, police say.
ISIS bride Zeinab Ahmad, 31, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, a month after returning to Australia for the first time in more than a decade after traveling to Syria with her family, including her mother Kawsar Abbas, 54, and father Mohammed Ahmad.
Police allege Ahmed and his mother knowingly possessed a slave for more than a year, from June 2017 to November 2018, while on Islamic State territory, as part of the terrorist group’s widespread and systematic attack on Yazidi people.
Opposing Zeinab Ahmad’s bail application, Detective Senior Constable Marc Clendenning said he had serious concerns about the safety and welfare of the community if she was released after living in Syria since 2014, where she was subject to Islamic law and married to multiple men.
She said the whereabouts of her current husband, who was born in Egypt, were unknown and that his father was alive and thought to be living in Iraq.
“Since his surrender to Kurdish forces he has never publicly renounced ISIS or said he no longer supports ISIS,” Clendenning told the court.
“He was working for ISIS and received a regular salary. He had an Islamic State ID card.
“Bail conditions do not exist to adequately ameliorate the risk and bail should not be granted.”
The court heard the complainant was captured when she was 15 and sold and traded as a sex slave among 17 different ISIS members.
It was purchased by the Ahmad family for about US$10,000 ($14,000) after a marriage examination in 2017, he said.
The defendant woman’s father told the girl that he bought her “in order to rape her” and for housework. He then slept in the same bedroom with Zeinab Ahmad and was repeatedly harassed by the man.
The complainant said the father wore military fatigues and went to fight with other Australians.
She said that during the physical and sexual attacks against her, the rest of her family was at home, calling for help and trying to fight her off.
He said that the defendant, who was 22 and 23 years old at the time, used a different name, had a Glock gun, treated her very badly and ordered her to do every job in the house as if she were a “deputy”.
The police informant said that the Ahmed family appeared to have privileges of ISIS that were not granted to others.
In 2013, Islamic State militants began taking center stage in the Middle East, and the Australian government listed the organization as a proscribed terrorist organization in June of that year, Clendenning said.
The terror group accepted oaths of allegiance from people abroad as it sought to seize and control territory until 2016, when it began losing ownership of territory in Iraq.
The court heard that between May and November 2014, various members of the Ahmed family began traveling to the Middle East on Australian passports and told authorities they planned to holiday in Türkiye.
Zeinab Ahmad left Melbourne with her husband on 4 November 2014 and set out for Syria as a “family unit” in December 2014. He was granted Australian citizenship two years ago. Police believe her husband was killed in Syria in May 2016.
While abroad, Clendenning said, the Ahmad family communicated regularly with family in Australia using Facebook Messenger and sometimes WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram.
In messages read to the court, Clendenning said the defendant had made a series of posts on Facebook, including one accusing Australia of having “more blood on its hands than ISIS has on its knives”.
He also mentioned the living conditions in Syria and said, “Our brothers are out to defend our region.”
When her husband was killed, she posted a message saying that he was the love of her life and that she left the house to get food but never returned.
“My legs felt like they were crushing underneath me, I just wanted him to come through the door, hug me and tell me everything was okay,” she wrote.
“Then I remembered that this was his dream. That’s why he migrated to become a martyr.”
Clendenning said the defendant later texted his family to say he was being paid $48 a month to help orphans and widows, and that police believed it was funded by the Islamic State.
Photos sent to the family showed an Islamic State flag hanging on the wall of the Ahmed family home and an assault rifle on the living room floor.
“The Ahmad family has a clear allegiance to the Islamic State,” Clendenning said.
Zeinab Ahmad, 31, and her mother Abbas, 54, were among four women and nine children who arrived in Australia last month after spending years in a northeast Syria refugee camp.
Abbas is accused of human trafficking in a region of Syria near the Iraqi border in June 2017, while both Abbas and Ahmed are accused of illegally using the slave and using its property as far back as November 2018.
The hearing before Chief Justice Lisa Hannan continues on Friday with Zeinab Ahmad’s defense team making a presentation on why she should be released.
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