EDITORIAL: ISIS brides must face consequences of their actions

The return of ISIS-linked Australian women and children set in motion a long-planned operation.

On Thursday police were waiting when group members arrived in Sydney and Melbourne.

This is as it should be. While the group is all Australian citizens, there is nothing in line with Australian values about their actions in travelling to join the blood-soaked ISIS campaign, which captured large parts of Iraq and Syria, as far back as 2014.

The cohort of four women and nine children left Syria’s al-Roj detention camp — where it is understood they have been for several years — in late April and travelled via Damascus before securing commercial flights back to Australia.

At least some of the women in the camp went to support fighters for an Islamic state under Sharia law — others have claimed previously they were misled or followed family to the conflict zone.

Let’s be clear. It is not feasible they would not have known where they were going, why, and what awaited them.

In its battle to establish an Islamic caliphate from which to wage jihad, in 2014 ISIS unleashed mass executions, beheadings and rape.

Footage of much of the horror was released publicly to instil fear.

ISIS fighters also attacked the Yazidi community in Iraq. The religious group was deemed by ISIS to be blasphemous.

Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled. Captured Yazidi men were executed. Women and children were enslaved and transported to Syria to be sold as sex slaves.

In 2015 a gruesome video showed a captured Jordanian pilot was burned to death in a cage.

This was the world view which drew the so-called ISIS brides to the region before the group collapsed in 2019.

The Government is adamant it has not helped their return — although it did provide passports, which it says it was legally obliged to do.

“We’ve provided no assistance for these people. We’re not repatriating them,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said the operation had been planned for years and investigations remained ongoing.

“Some individuals will be arrested and charged . . . some will face continued investigations when they arrive in Australia,” she said.

Multicultural Affairs Minister Anne Aly laid out the case on Wednesday. “There were laws enacted to make it unlawful, there were travel warnings at the time,” Senator Aly said.

“That indicates that anyone who went there at that time went there with a nefarious purpose, with a commitment to the ISIS agenda of establishing a caliphate by violent means.”

It is believed some face charges over alleged enslavement of Yazidi women.

Another of the group may face a charge related to entering or remaining in a declared terrorist area.

And then there is one crime that is not written in an official document.

Allowing their children to grow up in such an environment.

Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by Editor-in-Chief Christopher Dore.