‘ISIS brides’: Identities of 11 believed to be ISIS-linked Australian women revealed

The identities of 11 suspected ISIS brides stuck in a north Syrian refugee camp who are attempting to return to Australia with their children have been revealed.

While some have previously claimed ignorance for their predicament the Coalition has heaped further pressure on the Government to block the cohort from coming back.

It includes Nesrine Zahab, Sumaya Zahab, Aminah Zahab, Zeinab Ahmed, Kirsty Rosse-Emile, Janai Safar, Kawsar Abbas, Zahra Ahmad, Hodan Abby, Kawsar Kanj and Hyam Raad.

The group and their 23 children made headlines on Monday when they attempted to leave the detention camp in the hopes of returning to Australia but were forced to turn back shortly afterwards.

Their original bid to leave and an expected subsequent attempt has drawn sharp criticism from the Opposition who have questioned the Albanese government’s involvement in the reparation efforts.

Shadow Attorney General Michaelia Cash was the most vocal critic, accusing the Albanese government of “lying” and “calling bulls**t” in a fiery spray on Sky News on Thursday.

“Identity checks, DNA checks, passports being issued, documents for travel being prepared — I’m going to do something really unparliamentary and I’m going to call bulls**t on this Prime Minister,” she said.

“You are lying to the Australian people. You are assisting these women and their children, who turn their back on Australia, to come back here.

“Don’t treat Australians as mugs.”

The PM, however, declared he had “nothing but contempt” for the women, saying on Tuesday: “My mother would have said, ‘If you make your bed, you lie in it’.”

“We won’t repatriate them. These are people who went overseas supporting Islamic State and went there to provide support for people who basically want a caliphate,” Mr Albanese told ABC News Breakfast.

There first attempt has sparked sharp criticism from the Opposition and questions about the leave of Australian government involvement in the repartition efforts.

Concerns remain amid reports that the group may attempt a second attempt to leave

The women are mostly aged in their 30s and 50s, from Sydney and Melbourne and have been living in Syria for several years, one as far back as 2014.

Several of the women’s husbands or family members they either travelled to the region for or met once they arrived have since been killed or detained.

At least four of the women and six of the children are linked to the late ISIS recruited Muhammad Zahab.

It includes his mother Aminah, sister Sumaya, cousin Nesrine and her friend Janai Safar.

Many of the women, including Nesrine, have spoken in media interviews across the past six years to plead for the Australia government to repatriate them.

Nesrine, who is in her early 30s, previously told ABC’s Four Corners program in 2019 that she had unknowingly arrived in Syria in her early 20s.

“Who walks into a war zone?” she had told the broadcaster, claiming she was on a family holiday in Lebanon when she got stuck in the country, saying she only realised it was Syria after seeing an Islamic State (IS) flag.

Officials at the Al Roj camp have told media that the women were so confident that their trip would be a success, staff started dismantling their tents when they left, leaving them to bunk together when they returned.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke had revealed on Wednesday that one of the women was the subject of a Temporary Exclusion Order (TEO), which stops her from travelling to Australia for up to two years on national security grounds.

When asked on Friday about the group and the handwritten letter listing the women’s names, the Minister refused to confirm details to The Nightly.

It is not clear which one of the women is subject to the TEO.

Mr Burke and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong were also asked but failed to confirm by The Nightly’s deadline which travel documents or passports the women had been issued.

Australia’s requirements to obtain a passport, which lasts between five and 10 years, or a temporary passport, which can last a year, stipulates that an individual must attend an embassy at the least.

This suggests it’s most likely that the women would have been only issued a single-entry permit known as a “Provisional Travel Document”.

The permit is usually only valid 10 days but can be extended up to a month — putting pressure on the women’s timeline to leave Syria and reach an embassy in likely Turkey, Lebanon, or Iraq.

New opposition leader Angus Taylor repeated his call for the government to “shut the door” to the stop ISIS brides, urging Labor to protect Australia’s way of life by pulling all levers to stop their possible return.

“Labor has many levers at its disposal … temporary exclusion orders, refusing passports. Labor needs to get serious,” he told a press conference in Melbourne on Friday morning.

“We need to shut the door to people who want to come to this country bringing hate and violence from another part of the world.

“There are many questions to which have not been answered.”

Mr Taylor’s Shadow Home Affairs Minister Jonathon Duniam has continued Opposition’s calls for the government to delay the women’s journey to Australia.

Speaking on 2SM on Friday, he questioned why government hadn’t extended the TEOs to more women in the group.

“Frankly, they’re not friends of Australia. Let’s not forget, ISIS is a death cult, ISIS is a listed terrorist organisation,” the Tasmanian Liberal Senator said.

“It is imperative for the government to act now.

“If one of these ISIS Brides has been slapped with a temporary exclusion order. There are 11 adult females at least there, why is only one being slapped with the ban?

“They all went to the same place for the same reasons, supporting the same death cult.”

He added that the government had the powers to prevent issuing a passport or refuse issuing a passport due to a risk to national security and questioned why that leverage wasn’t put to use.

Health Minister Mark Butler was quizzed on the ISIS brides’ return on Sunrise on Friday and said citizenship and passports were still a consideration.

“The grounds are very specific and they’re very tight and they’re determined ultimately by national security agencies,” Mr Butler said.

“These are, of course, the same passport laws that operated under the former government when about 40 people came back from Syria, not just women and children, but also fighters themselves.

“Angus Taylor knows very strict constitutional limits apply and I think they know that it’s not that easy.”

Cabinet Minister Murray Watt said while he had sympathy for them, the government’s position of not helping them remained strong.

“We, of course, from a government perspective, focus more than anything, on the safety of Australians, and that explains the basis of our decisions that we’ve made about this group,” he told ABC radio on Friday morning.

National Senator Bridget McKenzie says Australia needs to rethink the term “ISIS brides” in the discussion about the repatriation of women and children from Syria.

“Let’s call these women for what they are. They’re not ‘ISIS brides’, they’re female jihadists,” she told Sky News.

“‘ISIS brides’ suggests that they’re somehow not in control as Australian citizens of where they travel, why they took their children to these countries and put them in harm’s way.”

It comes after Nationals MP Michael McCormack also claimed this week that labelling them “ISIS Bride” was a “soft” term — insisting that “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck”.

There is no suggestion of any criminal wrongdoing by those named.