Australian IS bride’s request to return rejected
Canberra: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday rejected an Islamic State (IS) bride’s request to return home, saying she had to face the consequences for her actions.
“They have to take responsibility for those decisions to join up with terrorists who are fighting Australia. I’m not going to put any Australian at risk to try to extract people from those situations,” he told the media here.
In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) from a refugee camp in Syria, the woman said she wanted to return to Australia because her two sons have fallen ill and her daughter was malnourished, Xinhua news agency reported.
“Both of my kids are sick. My daughter is very malnourished, she’s very skinny,” she said.
“My daughter needs milk and I don’t have money to buy her milk. I don’t know what to do now. I want to go back to my country. I think everybody’s asking for that because I’m an Australian citizen.”
Morrison said “they (the parents) have placed their children in this horrendous position… I think the children are innocent victims in the terrorist acts of their parents”.
“There is a process for us to deal with them under Australian law, and they will face the full force of Australian law should they be in a position to seek to come back,” he added.
According to data released by the Australian Department of Home Affairs in February, the fate of up to 100 Australians who left the country to join the IS remains unknown.
Two days ago, Canberra rejected calls from the US to “take responsibility” for its home-grown IS fighters, citing advice that it would be “very dangerous” to repatriate them.
The bride’s case is similar to that of Shamima Begum, a 19-year-old British IS bride whose newborn son died in a Syrian refugee camp earlier this month.
Prior to her son’s death, Begum appealed to the British government to allow her back into the country but the government instead cancelled her citizenship.
An American woman who went to Syria has also had her citizenship revoked.