‘ISIS bride’ member barred from return to Australia
A group of Australians dubbed “ISIS brides” and their children have been banned from entering the country as they try to escape Syria.
The group, consisting of 34 women and children, tried to leave the Al Roj refugee camp in Syria on Monday in order to go to the capital Damascus and then to Australia.
They were sent back due to an administrative issue, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed that the government would not offer repatriation assistance to associates and children of Islamic State members.
Home Secretary Tony Burke said one of the groups had been assessed by security agencies as meeting the threshold at which they should be banned from entering the country, despite being citizens.
“I can confirm that an interim exclusion order has been issued against an individual from this group on the advice of security agencies,” Mr Burke said on Wednesday.
“At this stage security agencies have not advised that other members of the group meet the legal thresholds for provisional exclusion orders.”
A temporary exclusion order stops Australian citizens from returning to the country from abroad for up to two years if they are deemed a security risk.
The opposition has been calling on the government to take action for days.
Mr Albanese has previously said the government had received national security advice on the cohort in Syria.
“We will enforce the law to the fullest extent we can. We want to make sure Australians are kept safe,” he told reporters in Tasmania.
“These are people who have chosen to go abroad to embrace the ideology of the caliphate, which is a brutal, reactionary ideology that aims to undermine and destroy our way of life.
“We are not providing any assistance to these people and we will not be providing any assistance to these people, but we will not be breaking Australian law.”
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