Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, I'm Patricia Carvellis, the host of Politics Now. And sometimes it can be hard to cut through all the noise from the Canberra bubble. But on the Politics Now podcast, bursting it wide open is our core business. I'm joined by the brightest minds at the ABC to break down the polyspeak and have a chat about what's actually going on behind the scenes.
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For the first time in Australian history, two women have been charged with crimes against humanity, slavery, for allegedly owning a Yazidi slave in Syria. And we've been in court for it. I'm Stephen Stockwell. This is the case of the ISIS brides.
Dozens of Australian women either chose to or were forced to travel to Syria as the wives of ISIS fighters.
These are the people Australia doesn't want, all held in the infamous Al-Hol camp in Syria. If you make your bed, you'll own it. These are people who went overseas supporting Islamic State.
Six women landed in Sydney and Melbourne late yesterday with 13 children.
The Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team have arrested a 53-year-old woman who will be charged tonight or tomorrow with enslavement. Why did you marry an ISIS terrorist?
Keep moving, keep moving. Why should we trust you?
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Chapter 2: What crimes have the ISIS-linked women been charged with in Australia?
Some we've heard openly expressed support for this kind of form of violent extremism and support for Islamic State before they went there. Others went with their husbands. We've heard different reasons for that. Some have said they were tricked or coerced. And in fact, one of the
older court cases, in fact, the only court case that has completely gone through the whole system, a woman called Mariam Raad, the court actually did see that her husband had a form of control over her as well. So it is a bit of a mixed bag. Of course, you'll hear people say that as an adult, you're responsible for your own actions, but there is mixed reasons for why people have gone over.
And again, some... openly supporting, but others we've heard since say they were coerced or tricked.
And the children who we're talking about as well, these are the sons and daughters of these women and in some cases orphans. Have I got that right?
Yeah. And again, it's a very different number as well because since 2019, since we've been using the phrase ISIS brides, it's 16 women that have come back to Australia, either repatriation or made their own way back, and 47 children. Now, women, as we've heard even in the recent court cases, you essentially had to be married under Islamic State rules.
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Chapter 3: Who are the ISIS brides and what led them to Syria?
So, for instance, these women, they may have been married to someone at first, and then when their husband dies, then they're remarried, and there can be more and more children along the way as well.
Yeah. And we're talking exclusively women and children here, no men coming back?
Not in the recent years. Not in the recent years. There's been different efforts previously, certainly across the world. There have been very different repatriation programs involving those who have actually fought with Islamic State.
But the focus since 2019 has been those who have allegedly supported Islamic State in one way or another by joining their husbands or other kind of declarations as well.
Yeah, right. Okay. James, it's interesting to think about what this would have been like in Syria in these periods for these women and children. I mean, we know that 230 Australian men and women have traveled to Syria and Iraq to support a fight with extremist groups since 2012.
I mean, there's a huge amount of concern and discussion before these women, this cohort, return to Australia, these 11 women and 23 children.
Out of that cohort, who's been charged? So we have two women in the Melbourne court system now, the Victorian court system, who have been charged with slavery-related offences. And that's a mother and daughter who have come back. They came back early May when we had four women. And so of those four women, two were charged with slavery offences.
You've got the mother, Khorsa Ahmad, and she's applying for bail now. That process is underway. Her daughter, Zainab Ahmed, had her bail refused, but was still in very early stages. And that relates to a period between 2017 and 2018 when this family allegedly owned this Yazidi teenager. Yazidi, they're an ethnic minority group who were heavily persecuted under Islamic State.
The men were butchered. The women were sold into sexual servitude, into house duties. Children as well sold into slavery as well. So that's those two. Of those four women in early May, then there's another woman who arrived in Sydney, and she is facing terrorism-related charges, and that's Janai Safar.
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Chapter 4: What is the legal process for the women returning from Syria?
Then you've got social media posts. So that means going through Meta, who are also overseas. So it was a long list of people that are overseas. And so their arguments were to corral these people into the Australian legal system will be a long and complicated process. And when they are overseas... you don't have that kind of pulling power.
If you're told to go to the court here, you go to the court. But it's a little bit more complicated when these people aren't Australian citizens, they're not based in Australia. So that's the argument they made. So that's what makes one of the reasons why this case is definitely worth monitoring closely, because it is a first.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, these are offences that happened overseas, though. Why is this something that we're trying in Australia?
Well, I mean, with international law, just generally speaking, there is usually a preference to deal with it domestically. You don't want everything being sent up to the International Criminal Court. So it is completely acceptable to charge these crimes in a domestic setting. Yeah. But it comes down to that Australia has actually passed laws to recognise this.
International law is one of those grey zones where, you know, a lot of states acknowledge these laws, but then it's about enforcement. Who's actually going to enforce the law? There's no international police per se. With crimes against humanity, these specific charges, these are laws that exist in Australia now. So they are new laws that obviously recognise that these –
Any crimes that exist overseas under these circumstances can certainly be charged here in Australia as well.
Okay, great. Thank you. So I've been sitting in court thinking, it's happening a long way away. Why is this happening here and unfolding here? So I appreciate the explanation. James, these women are all working their way through the various court processes we've talked about. Zainab's bail was knocked back last week. Corsair's hearing is happening right now.
Ryan's hearing has started, but that's underway. There's a delay involved in that. Janai Safar in Sydney had her bail refused last month. This was a huge political story when these women were returning to Australia. The Australian government insisted that it wouldn't help. Anthony Albanese famously said, these people have made their bed, so they've got to lie in it.
These women organized their own flights. They paid their own way back to Australia. Is that right?
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