IS-linked Australian women charged with keeping slave in Syria

Sydney: Two Australian women “kept a female slave” after travelling to Syria in 2014 to support the Islamic State group, police said Friday after they were charged in Melbourne.

The pair returned to Australia on Thursday evening for the first time in almost a decade, travelling from a Syrian detention camp where they were stranded after the group’s collapse.

They were immediately arrested after their Qatar Airways flight landed at Melbourne International airport.

Police accused the women — a mother and daughter aged 53 and 31 — of “crimes against humanity” while living under Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate.

The 53-year-old woman was “complicit in the purchase of a female slave for US$10,000”, the Australian Federal Police said.

The 31-year-old woman had “knowingly kept a female slave in the home”.

They were detained by Kurdish forces in 2019 as the Islamic State caliphate collapsed, police said, and were held in Syria’s notorious Roj camp.

“This remains an active investigation into very serious allegations,” police counter-terror boss Stephen Nutt said.

In total, four women and their nine children flew back to Australia from Syria on Thursday night.

Janai Safar, 32, was separately arrested after touching down in Sydney and has been charged with entering a restricted area, and joining a “terrorist organisation”.

Safar travelled to Syria in 2015 to join her husband, who was a member of the Islamic State group, police said.

A fourth woman travelling with the group was not arrested.

As Islamic State rose to power in the early 2010s, Australia made it an offence to travel to strongholds such as Raqqa province in Syria.

Hundreds of women from Western nations were lured to the Middle East as the Islamic State group gained prominence in the early 2010s, in many cases following husbands who had signed up as jihadist fighters.

Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and others are still grappling with how to treat citizens stranded after the group collapsed.

Widely known as the “ISIS brides”, the case has stirred strong feelings in Australia.

Australia’s Human Rights Commission urged the government in March to help repatriate 34 women and children stuck in Syria’s notorious Roj detention camp.

But others have accused the women of turning their back on Australia and believe they should be left to face the consequences.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has accused the four returning Australian women of making “a horrific choice to join a dangerous terrorist organisation”.

They are not the first Australian citizens to return from Syria’s refugee camps.

Small groups of women and children flew back to Australia in 2019, 2022 and 2025.