By Renju Jose
SYDNEY, May 8 (Reuters) – Australian police said on Friday they had charged two women linked to the Islamic State extremist group with slavery offences after they returned overnight from Syria, where they had been detained in a refugee camp for more than seven years.
The women, aged 53 and 31, face crimes against humanity charges including owning and using a slave in Syria, which carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison. They were arrested at Melbourne airport on Thursday upon their arrival.
“This remains an active investigation into very serious allegations,” Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Counter Terrorism Stephen Nutt said in a statement.
Both women travelled to Syria in 2014 with their families and allegedly kept a female slave at their homes, police said. Reuters could not immediately contact the women or their lawyers.
Separately, a 32-year-old Australian woman was arrested at Sydney airport on Thursday and charged with terror-related offences, including allegedly joining Islamic State. The charges carry a maximum jail term of 10 years, and she is due to appear in a Sydney court on Friday.
The woman travelled to Syria in 2015 to join her husband, who had previously left Australia and joined ISIS, police said.
The government said earlier this week that four women and nine children planned to return to Australia from Syrian camps without official assistance.
Officials have declined to comment on the status of the fourth woman or the children.
The arrival of the women and children put pressure on the centre-left government with critics blaming the government for not doing enough to prevent their travel home. But the government said there were “very serious limits” on what authorities could do to prevent Australian citizens re-entering the country.
Following ISIS’s territorial defeat, many relatives of suspected fighters were detained in Syrian camps.
In January, the United States began moving detained ISIS members out of Syria after the collapse of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which had been guarding around a dozen facilities holding fighters and affiliated civilians, including foreigners.
The Australian government repatriated four women and 13 children from Syrian camps in 2022. About 21 Australians remain in al-Roj camp, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported.
(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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