Aussie families attempt repatriation from Syrian camp
Authorities said four Australian families attempted to leave a camp in Syria where people allegedly linked to ISIS militants were located and return to their country.
Associated Press journalists saw 13 women and children on a bus escorted by a delegation of Syrian government officials leaving the Roj camp, a remote facility near the Iraqi border that houses family members of suspected ISIS militants.
Lana Hussein, an official with the Women’s Protection Units of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which manages the security of the camp, said that the departure of the families was organized in coordination with the central government in Damascus.
He said the families were expected to stay in Damascus for about 72 hours and then “will be deported as part of security procedures.”
Representatives of the Syrian foreign ministry and the Australian government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
An attempt to repatriate 34 women and children from the camp to Australia in February was canceled after they were turned away by Syrian authorities.
At the time, Australian authorities said they would not repatriate the families, and the Albanian government later issued a temporary restraining order banning one of the women from returning.
It was not immediately clear whether there had been coordination with the Australian government before Friday’s new initiative.
The Roj camp is located in north-east Syria in an area controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, but the Australians had planned to leave Damascus.
Camp officials said at the time that the planned repatriations were organized by family members of the returnees, not directly by Australian officials.
Former ISIS fighters, their wives and children from multiple countries have been held in a network of camps and detention centers in northeastern Syria after the militant group lost control of its territory in Syria in 2019. Although defeated, the group still has sleeper cells that carry out deadly attacks in both Syria and Iraq.
The larger al-Hol camp was closed and thousands of suspected ISIS militants previously held in Syria were transferred to Iraq by the US military to be tried there.
The moves follow clashes between government forces and the SDF in January. Government forces captured most of the territory previously held by the SDF. Amid the chaos and clashes, many detainees escaped from Al Hol and some escaped from the detention center.
Australian governments have twice repatriated Australian women and children from Syrian detention camps. Other Australians also returned without government assistance.
