ISIS Brides: Video emerges of Tony Burke hugging Dr Jamal Rifi, Sydney man leading push repatriate ISIS brides

Video has emerged of Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke hugging the Sydney doctor leading the mission to repatriate so-called ISIS brides from Syria during his election night victory party last year.

The vision recorded in the Sydney suburb of Punchbowl shows Dr Jamal Rifi, who is a known close friend of the Minister, dancing with the initials ‘TB’ spray-painted on his head while wearing a red Labor party T-shirt at the May 3 celebration.

SEE THE VIDEO IN THE PLAYER ABOVE

Last week The Nightly revealed Dr Rifi had travelled to the Middle East with Australian passports for the 34 terrorist-linked women and children trying to escape from a detention camp in northeast Syria.

Mr Burke has repeatedly insisted that the Albanese Government is not involved in the private effort being coordinated by Dr Rifi and had no knowledge of his friend’s overseas travel until it was revealed by The Nightly.

Dr Rifi has now broken his silence about the mission, to rescue the 11 families saying: telling Nine Newspapers “I’d do it 1000 times…. the children shouldn’t suffer from the sins of fathers or mothers and Australian children”.

“We’re making some inroads, but the biggest obstacle is the prime minister’s statements,” Rifi said. “The Syrian side is asking if he doesn’t want them, we don’t have anything from them, why should we help them?”

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has bristled at suggestions his push to remove the disgraced former Prince Andrew from the line of Royal succession is a deliberate distraction from the growing controversy over so-called ISIS brides trying to return to Australia.

On Tuesday, an exasperated Anthony Albanese rejected suggestions he could simply cancel passports for the terrorist-linked families in Syria, as a former Labor MP joined calls for the government to take urgent steps to block them coming home.

When asked to respond to accusations he only penned a letter to the UK PM about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a distraction to “move the story on from the ISIS brides”, the PM responded to interviewer Karl Stefanovic with “oh, for goodness sake”.

Mr Albanese insisted he acted separately and in response to the issues unfolding in the UK, to “encourage” his British counterparts to take actions.

Again asked about why Australia couldn’t just use its powers under the passport Act to block the suspected ISIS linked group from returning to Australia.

“That’s not right. If it was that simple, then you would have done it,” he claimed.

“There are constitutional issues and legal rights that people have.”

He then again asserted that the previous Morrision-led Coalition Government had allowed 40 people, including fighters, to return from Syria following the rise of Islamic State.

“Forty people came back … on the former government, including ISIS fighters. People who were actual fighters came back,” he said.