ISIS brides are returning to Australia - and many are asking the same question | Daily Mail

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:03]Well, it turns out that the so-called ISIS brides, at least some of them, are making their way back to Australia after being initially blocked by the Syrian government because they said that the Australian government wasn't cooperating and therefore the mission couldn't go ahead. It turns out that the first tranch since 2022 of new arrivals of these ISIS brides and their children are on their way to Australia. It'll be interesting to see how the opposition react to this, but it'll also be fascinating to see what the government's reaction is upon their arrival because Anthony Albanesey and the immigration minister Tony Burke have been at pains to be tough with their rhetoric that they wouldn't render assistance. But that was always very different to promising to block the return of any of the ISIS brides. That promise was never made despite opposition requests that it be made. And we now have a scenario where, well, they're on their way. Make no mistake, this is a hot political topic here in Australia because in the wake of the terrorist attack at Bondi, in the wake of even to some extent the arrest, the very public arrest of Ben Robert Smith on war crime charges. In the wake of these sort of events, people are watching very closely how the authorities deal with the so-called ISIS brides and their children. Will they be publicly arrested the same way that Ben Robert Smith was?

[00:01:32]>> My confidential sources have told me at least two of the ISIS brides are expected to be arrested when they land, but potentially more.

[00:01:42]>> What's good for the goose should be good for the gander. And many Australians think well if that's what somebody who has won the Victoria Cross receives irrespective of guilt or innocence then surely that is what these ISIS brides who in a lot of people's views are treacherous and even treasonous to Australia should be forced to endure.

[00:02:02]>> Some Australian ladies who were married to ISIS members um they're trying to come back to Australia now with their children.

[00:02:09]>> Do you think they should be allowed to considering they married into ISIS? No, no, no.

[00:02:16]>> Should stay over there.

[00:02:17]>> Yeah, we should I don't know. We should do the the best thing for for her and the children.

[00:02:23]>> The children that's the more important children.

[00:02:26]>> Do you think they should be allowed to come back?

[00:02:28]>> Yeah. I think because they are the citizens, they got the right to come back.

[00:02:32]>> Do you think they should return?

[00:02:33]>> They should be returning.

[00:02:35]>> The children looking after the children.

[00:02:37]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:02:38]>> If they are connected with the Islamic militant, they are extremist. So >> do you think police or you know intelligence agencies should monitor them while they're here?

[00:02:48]>> Definitely because it's the threat for the communist.

[00:02:50]>> In the meantime though the opposition hasn't stopped its attacks. They say that the government has to be unequivocal about this and say that they will be arrested on site or frankly not even allowed into the country in the first place. But whether that's even possible or not, the fact that they're on the move now is at least in part down to something that's happened out of the United States. An unexpected development in the eyes of some. Reports indicate that the US wants to close the center that houses the so-called ISIS brides and their children, as well as a host of other leftovers, I suppose, from the period of the Islamic State, which collapsed in 2019. That camp in northeast Syria is expensive. Scholars tell us it's something that the US wants to get on from because they even think that it's at risk of being a terrorism hotspot bringing all of these, if you like, ideologues together into one spot.

[00:03:48]They worry about it apart from the finances of it. So the Trump administration, they want it closed down. They want countries like Australia to help with that. But Anthony Albanzy says there's nothing new in that. That's been the case for a long time. Well before, if you like, I guess the financial constraints that are currently in play for the US as they have the ongoing conflict in the Middle East against Iran. But that unexpected development is one of the reasons we hear that this has accelerated and that the opportunity has been sought by these so-called ISIS brides to try to get back to Australia in the wake of that conflict. It's interesting how circumstances change though. One of the ISIS brides as reported by the Daily Mail, she has been a previous critic saying that she would never return to Australia as late as 2019 as the regime was collapsing. She made the point that she would never want to expose her son to what Australia offers where, as she put it, people walk naked on the streets. Not something she would want to expose her son to. She was seemingly happy to expose him, however, to the brutality of Islamic State, to beheadings and public executions, and even heads on spikes around the city of Rafa. These were the sort of brutal images that we all saw here in the West at the height of ISIS's powers when it took over and formed its wannabe caliphate. Yet, here we are, fast forwarding just a few years, and that bride, as well as a total of 30, including their children, want to get back to Australia. Well, we'll see what the government does on this front. The last time that we saw any of these so-called ISIS brides making their way to Australia and actually getting here was at the end of 2022. That was years ago now. And the political climate is somewhat different. the rising support for One Nation, as I mentioned, the concerns in the wake of the Bondi terror attack and also frankly the conflict as it currently stands in the Middle East with what's happening with Iran. That makes it a far more volatile issue arguably now than it was in late 2022 when we just had a change of government, but the circumstances were somewhat different. While Labour has been unprepared to say that it will guarantee that these brides and their children don't make their way to Australia, it has certainly to be fair to Anthony Albani been strong that they won't get anything resembling Australian support.

[00:06:21]And if this latest example of them trying to get out of Syria to use their passports to get to Australia is anything to go by, well, it would seem, at least from the Syrian government's perspective, that a lack of support and help by the Australian government, which is what Albo says he won't provide, it does seem like that is having an effect because at least as far as the Syrian regime was concerned, it meant that they brought an end to the repatriation efforts. It's hard to know what the government does and doesn't know about the efforts that are being made by supporters of these ISIS brides to get back to Australia because they're not being completely frank and open with us.

[00:07:04]You get the impression. When the prime minister in recent times was quizzed about what he did or didn't know, his argument was because we're not helping them, we're not across the details.

[00:07:14]You'd hope from a security perspective that there was more to it than just that. Because if these brides and their children do get back to Australia, that isn't the end of the matter. Whether you agree or disagree with them being allowed to do so as legal Australian citizens, if they get here, the security watch of keeping an eye on them for fear that the radicalism that they might bring from abroad into this country is going to be expensive. It's going to be difficult to be confident about it. And on top of all of that, it's going to be an enduring issue for years and years to come. While it's easy as individuals to appreciate that in the wake of the collapse of the regime, with the appalling conditions in the camps, as reported in the northeast of Syria, it's understandable at a human level why these brides and their children in particular who are more innocent might want to get back here. They made their beds and they need to lie in it. The brides in particular chose to walk away from this country. They chose to leave to support a radical ideology that they now want back in. There's no guarantee that that radicalism has gone. There's even no guarantee amongst the more innocent children who were drawn into this that they haven't been radicalized by their time around their family and around the ISIS individuals even from a very young