Australia refuses to take back ISIL detainees in Syria

CANBERRA

Family members of suspected ISIL militants who are Australian nationals walk toward a van bound for the airport in Damascus during the first repatriation operation of the year at Roj Camp in eastern Syria, Monday, Feb. 16, 2026.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Feb. 17 his government would not help Australians in a Syrian camp holding families of ISIL terrorists return home, with the government open to prosecutions if they make it back.

Some 34 Australians were released from the Roj camp on Feb. 16 but failed to reach the capital Damascus because of "poor coordination" with the Syrian authorities.

They were forced to return to the detention camp, said camp official Rashid Omar.

Camp director Hakmieh Ibrahim had earlier said the women and children from 11 families were handed over to relatives "who have come from Australia to collect them.”

Representatives of the families were working to resolve the issue with Syrian authorities, he added.

The families were "the last Australians in the Roj camp.” He noted that the facility still housed "2,201 people of around 50 nationalities.”

Albanese told public broadcaster ABC that his government was refusing to help the 34 Australians from the camp because, "as my mother would say, you make your bed, you lie in it.”

"We have no sympathy, frankly, for people who travelled overseas in order to participate in what was an attempt to establish a caliphate to undermine and destroy our way of life," he added.

"It is unfortunate that children are impacted by this as well, but we are not providing any support."

Any of the citizens who made it back to Australia would face the "full force of the law" if they had committed crimes, the prime minister said.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) still control the Roj camp in Syria's northeast, where relatives of foreign jihadists are detained.

The SDF withdrew from the larger Al-Hol camp in January under military pressure from Syrian government security forces, who took control of it.

Since then, thousands of family members of foreign jihadists have left that camp for unknown destinations. The facility housed some 24,000 people, mostly Syrians but also Iraqis and more than 6,000 other foreigners.

Repatriation of relatives has been controversial in Australia, where some politicians have claimed they pose a risk to national security.

Others, such as Human Rights Watch, have in the past praised the government for rescuing Australian citizens from "horrific" conditions.