Australia pulls legal emergency brakes to stop citizen's return from Syria

The Australian government has used rarely exercised counterterrorism powers to temporarily block one of its citizens staying in a Syrian detention camp from returning home.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke confirmed that a temporary exclusion order had been issued following advice from security agencies, marking an uncommon application of legislation aimed at reducing terrorism risks, according to Australian media reports.

One adult among a group of 34 Australian women and children held at the al-Roj detention camp has been served with a temporary exclusion order, preventing them from entering Australia for up to two years.

The remainder of the group, however, has not been assessed by intelligence agencies as meeting the legal threshold for such a ban. That assessment could allow the wives and children of Islamic State fighters to return to Australia if they are able to arrange their own travel.

Earlier this week, Kurdish authorities who manage the camp released the group in anticipation of their repatriation. They were, however, later forced to return to the facility due to what was described as “poor coordination between their relatives and the Damascus government.”

With their potential return still unresolved, debate continues over the level of risk they might pose if allowed back into Australia.

Shadow Home Affairs Minister Jonno Duniam questioned why only one individual had been subjected to a ban.

“If the Minister is claiming that only one of the [cohort] is deemed risky enough to warrant a Temporary Exclusion Order, then this raises more questions than answers,” he said in a statement.

“[This group] all travelled to the same ‘declared area’ for the same reason of supporting the same listed terrorist organisation – how can only one member of this group be deemed a risk and the rest somehow okay?”

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was asked whether exclusion orders would be applied more broadly. He said the government was acting on security advice and would “do what we can to keep Australians safe within the law.”

“We will implement the law to its fullest capacity that we can,” he said.

“These people, I’ve said yesterday, you make your bed, you lie in it. These are people who chose to go overseas to align themselves with an ideology which is the caliphate, which is a brutal, reactionary ideology and that seeks to undermine and destroy our way of life. So, we will be doing and are doing nothing to assist or to repatriate these people.”

Albanese acknowledged it was “unfortunate” that children were caught up in the situation, but added: “that’s not their decision, but it’s the decision of their parents or their mother.”

The question of how to handle citizens linked to terrorist organizations has long divided public opinion in Australia. In 2022, the High Court of Australia ruled that the government’s decision to strip an Australian-Turkish dual national of his citizenship after a terrorism-related conviction in Syria was unconstitutional. The court found that revoking citizenship constituted a form of punishment that could only be imposed by a judicial authority, not the executive branch.

By Nazrin Sadigova