Relatives of suspected Islamic State militants who are Australian citizens sit in a van heading to Damascus airport during the first repatriation operation of the year, at Camp Roj in eastern Syria, Monday, February 16, 2026. Thirty-four Australian citizens from 11 families left the camp.
Baderkhan Ahmad/AP
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Baderkhan Ahmad/AP
MELBOURNE, Australia – The Australian government will not repatriate from Syria a group of 34 women and children with suspected links to the Islamic State group, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday.
The women and children of 11 families were supposed to fly from the Syrian capital, Damascus, to Australia, but Syrian authorities returned them to Roj camp in northeastern Syria on Monday due to procedural problems, officials said.
Only two groups of Australians have been repatriated with government assistance from Syrian camps since the fall of the Islamic State group in 2019. Other Australians have also returned without government assistance.
Albanese declined to comment on a report that the latest women and children had Australian passports.
“We provide absolutely no support and we do not repatriate people,” Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in Melbourne.
“Frankly, we have no sympathy for the people who went abroad to participate in what was an attempt to establish a caliphate to undermine and destroy our way of life. And so, as my mother would say, ‘you make your bed, you lie in it,'” Albanese added.
Albanese noted that the international child welfare charity Save the Children had failed to establish in the Australian courts that the Australian government had a responsibility to repatriate citizens from the Syrian camps.
After the federal court ruled in favor of the government in 2024, Save the Children Australia chief executive Mat Tinkler argued the government had a moral, if not legal, obligation to repatriate the families.
Albanese said if the latest group reached Australia without government help they could be charged.
Under Australian law, traveling to the former Islamic State stronghold in Al Raqqa province without a legitimate reason between 2014 and 2017 was a crime. The maximum penalty was 10 years in prison.
“It’s unfortunate that children are also affected by this, but we provide no support. And if anyone manages to find their way back to Australia, they will face the full force of the law, if any laws have been broken,” Albanese added.
The last group of Australians repatriated from Syrian camps arrived in Sydney in October 2022.
There were four mothers, ex-partners of supporters of the Islamic State, and 13 children.
Australian officials had assessed the group as the most vulnerable among 60 Australian women and children held at the Roj camp, the government said at the time.
Eight descendants of two slain Australian Islamic State fighters were repatriated from Syria in 2019 by the Conservative government that preceded Albanese’s centre-left Labor Party administration.
The issue of Islamic State supporters resurfaced in Australia after the murder of 15 people at a Jewish festival in Bondi Beach on December 14. The attackers were allegedly inspired by the Islamic State.