Dr Jihad: Tareq Kamleh’s connections to key Islamic State militant Khadra Essa revealed

The Perth doctor who was recently discovered in a Baghdad prison after joining Islamic State in 2015 has family ties with a high-ranking figure in the terrorist group who remains on the run.

Tareq Kamleh’s sister-in-law was IS militant Khadra Essa, a Somali-Dutch born woman who led a murderous all-female IS battalion and who is wanted internationally over terrorism offences and the kidnapping of two American siblings.

Kamleh married Essa’s sister — who is also accused of kidnapping — in Syria after he secretly left Perth to join Islamic State in 2015.

The United States Government is offering rewards of up to $5 million for information on Essa’s whereabouts and for the safe return of Yusuf and Zahra Shikder.

Essa, also known as Umm Qaqa al-Somali, violently enforced sharia law against women and ordered murders and assaults. In 2019 she took the Shikder siblings after their mother — who had brought them from America to Syria to join ISIS without their father’s knowledge — died in a military strike.

Kamleh’s IS connections were revealed by US diplomat and politician Peter Galbraith, who has spent much of the past decade rescuing and repatriating foreign children left languishing in Syrian camps after the collapse of the IS caliphate in 2019.

He became aware of Kamleh during his search for the Shikder siblings and in 2021 Mr Galbraith helped rescue and repatriate Kamleh’s American-born step-daughter from a previous marriage. The then eight-year-old was being held by Kamleh’s fourth wife, Essa’s sister Umm Yakeen, in a Syrian camp.

Mr Galbraith told The West Australian Kamleh had a very high profile in Syria due to his work as a doctor, and expressed surprise that he was able to stay hidden for so long.

The former Princess Margaret Hospital and the Mount Hospital paediatrician took the name Abu Yousef al-Australie in Syria and appeared in propaganda videos for IS in 2015 and 2017.

“He was a really well known figure (in Syria), a lot of the western ISIS women and the foreign ISIS women used him as their paediatritian, then he’s been sharing cells with all these other men (after his arrest),” Mr Galbraith said.

“Given he’s such a prominent figure it’s quite remarkable he has been able to stay hidden.

“(And) biometric IDs were supposed to have been done on all the prisoners, so it’s not clear to me how he wasn’t identified before, and why he didn’t identify himself.

“But I’m in touch with a number of women in prison camps and one of them said she was not surprised to learn he was still alive.”

It was widely believed — even by his family — that Kamleh was killed in an air strike in 2017 but it emerged last week he is among 13 men in an Iraqi prison hoping to return home.

After joining Islamic State Kamleh married and had a son with American woman Ariel Bradley, a fellow ISIS convert. Bradley and the couple’s son Yousef are believed to have died in an air strike in November 2018.

Bradley’s surviving daughter from an earlier marriage, Aminah Mohamad, was being hidden by Kamleh’s fourth wife when she was rescued from Al-Roj refugee camp in Syria by a team including Mr Galbraith.

Aminah is now living with her mother’s family in America. Mr Galbraith said the news of Kamleh’s survival raised questions around the fate of Bradley and his son.

It is believed Kamleh was able to flee Raqqa in Syria with other foreign fighters in late 2018 as the caliphate collapsed, before he was later captured in Syria and moved to a Baghdad prison.

Mr Galbraith expected Kamleh would be tried in Iraq, despite his bid to be repatriated to Australia, where he is the subject of an Australian Federal Police warrant over terrorism offences.

“My belief is people who commit crimes should be tried in the country where they committed the crimes, this whole idea that justice is for perpetrators . . . it is for the victims, and there were tens of thousands of victims of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, like the young girls used as sex slaves,” he said.

“There’s a very good chance all these men would be tried in Iraq, and some of them ought to be tried in Iraq.”

According to the US State Department the battalion Essa led, Nusaybah Katibah (ISIS-NK), had several hundred trained members at its height, including Western citizens “who pose a particular threat to the West because of their ability to more easily enter Western countries and integrate with their populations.”

“While the group has diminished in size following the territorial defeat of ISIS, it continues to be active and pose a danger,” the Department said.

Kamleh’s Perth-based parents Imad and Aisha Kamleh told The West Australian this week they want nothing to do with their radicalised son who “ruined” their lives.

The couple said they felt deeply betrayed by him and would support any prosecution if their son made it back home.

“I have absolutely nothing to say (to him), absolutely nothing,” Mrs Kamleh said.

“I will not give any regard to him — nothing — there was no need for him to go (to Syria) and do that. He had a good job here, he was taking care of children.”

The couple, aged in their late 70s, last saw their son in 2015 when he had come for a family dinner the night before he was due to go travelling on what he claimed was a trip to Melbourne to visit friends.

They had no idea of his plans and did not hear of their son until he surfaced much later in Islamic State propaganda videos plastered across Australian news sites and on TV.

“No question about it, if I knew what he was going to do (travel to Syria) I would do everything in my capacity, in my means, to prevent him leaving,” Mr Kamleh said.

“I was born in Jerusalem, my wife is a German — we both came to this country, and we got the privilege and the beauty of this country.”

Premier Roger Cook said he hoped Kamleh would remain imprisoned in Iraq and unable to return to Australia.

“Well, he’s alive and he’s in jail, I hope he stays there in Iraq and assists them with continuing to stamp out the insidious impact of ISIS on those countries,” he said.