Ruby Jones

tonight but their freedom is likely to be short-lived federal police have confirmed some of the women will be arrested as soon as they arrive on home soil late yesterday four women and nine children arrived in australia from syria the women who originally left the country to be part of the islamic state caliphate have spent the years since its collapse in syrian refugee camps

Many of their children, who are Australian citizens too, have never been here before.

But they aren't the first to come back.

Since 2019, women and children like them have been returning.

What they're returning to has become more and more hostile, with politicians maintaining they aren't welcome.

I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to 7am.

Today, Professor Michelle Grossman, expert on violent extremism from Deakin University, on our responsibility to these citizens and the danger of politicising their position.

It's Friday, May 8.

So, Michelle, there's 13 women and children who left a detention camp in Syria a couple of weeks ago.

They've now arrived back in Australia.

To begin with, can you just tell me what we know about these women and how it was that they ended up in Syria in the first place?

And can we talk a bit more about what these women and children would have been exposed to over all of those years in Syria and then in detention?

Because the al-Raj refugee camp in northeastern Syria, where many of these people were, that has a reputation for being a really desperate place to be.

Okay, so with all of that in mind then, the normalisation of violence, the indoctrination, the training that you mentioned, what do we know about the security risk that these 13 people pose to Australia?

Coming up, do we have the right approach when it comes to counterterrorism, trauma and children?

Michelle, we've been talking about the women and children returning to Australia from Syria after spending years there being linked to Islamic State fighters.

As you said, we know that they're going to be closely monitored by police, by security agencies.

But can we talk a little more about what we know is in place to meet them in terms not only of assessing threat, but of potential de-radicalisation?

And one way of judging how well any of this is likely to go is to look at what's happened to families who've been arriving back in Australia since 2019.

So what do we know about how that has gone?