Home Affairs Minister Says Australian ISIS Brides Chose To Be There

Debate has raged for months about what the Australian government is meant to do about the citizens who left our shores to join Islamic State in the Middle East.

Now that the terrorist group has been largely wiped out, it has left dozens of mainly women and their children begging to return to Australia.

But the Home Affairs Minister has drawn the biggest line in the sand yet about what the government will do in the future.

PA

Peter Dutton said: "People made a decision to either go in themselves or tragically take their children. We issued very stern warnings about people that were going."

He rejects some of the citizen's claims that they were tricked into travelling to Syria to marry an ISIS fighter and didn't realise the reality of what they were getting themselves into.

"It's a very unstable environment and the intelligence agency advice to us is very clear that it's not possible to send people in," Mr Dutton added. "We're not going to put at risk people who are members of our Defence Force, our Foreign Affairs department or in fact the Home Affairs department."

The Home Affairs Minister proposed that the people who want to return home could undergo a DNA test to prove that they're Australian.

He told radio station 3AW: "'We don't know whether they are [Australian citizens]. You would need DNA testing and you'd need other checks to be made.

"Some people will face arrest if they do get back to Australia because we've been able to gather enough evidence in relation to them."

Channel 9

Some of the women who are trapped in the Syrian refugee compound known as Al-Hawl camp have spoken out about their fears of never returning home.

Many live on what's called 'Australia Street'.

Zahra Ahmed told the Sydney Morning Herald: "The children have already experienced way too much trauma; way too many bullets.

"Even in the camp just the other night they had a shoot-off and the kids woke up crying. And then a few nights later it was a thunderstorm and they all thought it was shooting and they all just woke up hysterical.

"They're starting to tell us at the shops, ''Stock up on water, stock up on flour, you don't want to get hungry''. And just hearing that, can you imagine, it's really scary."

There's no clear way forward but there's no denying that it will get trickier as time wanes on.

Topics: News, Australia

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie