EDITORIAL: ISIS brides raise wider questions about security
EDITORIAL: Ongoing management of those who have returned from the Middle East will place a huge drain on security agencies and taxpayers. There are also wider issues at play and questions that need answers.
The timing was extraordinary.
The Albanese Government said on Thursday the last of the so-called “ISIS brides” — who was previously barred from Australia — could return from Syria after finding a way around her temporary exclusion order.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke had initially issued the order against the woman on national security grounds.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.The news she was free to return came the morning after ASIO director-general Mike Burgess delivered an alarming annual threat assessment.
The woman and her child are thought to be the last of the cohort to return from Syrian detention camps.
Four ISIS brides are facing charges relating to their time in the region after travelling to join the blood-soaked ISIS campaign.
The campaign released horrific brutality in its battle to establish an Islamic caliphate from which to wage jihad, including mass executions, beheadings and rape.
ISIS fighters also attacked the Yazidi community in Iraq. Thousands of Yazidis fled. Captured Yazidi men were executed. Women and children were enslaved and transported to Syria to be sold as sex slaves.
Mr Burke said the returned group had made “horrific, ugly decisions” to travel to the region as far back as 2014.
He argued that legally his hands were tied about the latest returnee because a formal request was made which the Government was advised could not be rejected. He said authorities were “ready” and there would be extreme surveillance in place.
We have here a person deemed enough of a risk to have previously been slapped with an order denying permission to enter Australia.
Has that risk now evaporated?
We can only presume she is still seen as a risk given the attention drawn to security measures which will be enacted.
Mr Burke tried to deflect attention, saying large groups had also come back from the region under the former Liberal government.
“There have been people returning since long before we came to government, including 45 men who went there to fight, all of whom had returned before we came to office,” Mr Burke said.
If he thinks about it he should realise that in itself hardly provides any degree of comfort.
And it comes on top of the warnings from Mr Burgess that he was “gravely concerned” about terrorism threats, and that the threat level of “probable” was not wide enough to “tell the full story”.
He said ASIO had resolved 14 major terror-related cases since the Bondi Beach massacre in December.
The alleged murderers had placed ISIS flags inside the windscreens of the vehicle they drove to the scene.
Ongoing management of those who have returned from the Middle East will place an enormous drain on security agencies and taxpayers.
There are also wider issues at play. And questions that need answers.
Are the abhorrent views held by the community they joined in the Middle East shared by members of their wider community in Australia?
What does ASIO need to prevent any group who would wish us harm from carrying out an attack?
Has ASIO asked for, or received, the support it needs from the Government to stop that happening?
Plenty rides on the answers.
Australians will want to know that in a world that is becoming ever more dangerous, everything possible is being done to keep them safe.
