A woman who arrived back in Australia after spending more than seven years in Syrian detention camps has been charged in Sydney with allegedly entering a declared conflict zone and joining Islamic State.
Janai Safar, 32, was a member of a group of 13 women and children who arrived back in separate flights – one into Sydney and one into Melbourne – on Thursday evening.
Two other women from the group – Kawsar Abbas, 53, and her daughter Zeinab Ahmad, 31 – were arrested by officers from the Victorian joint counter-terrorism team at Melbourne airport. Abbas’ other daughter, 33-year-old Zahra Ahmad, was not arrested or charged. The women arrived with eight children.
Safar is expected to face Downing Centre local court on Friday charged with entering, or remaining in, declared areas, and being a member of a terrorist organisation, Australian federal police said on Thursday night. Both offences carry a maximum penalty of up to 10 years’ imprisonment.
It will be alleged the woman travelled to Syria in 2015 to join her husband, who had previously left Australia and joined Islamic State.
AFP assistant commissioner for counter-terrorism, Stephen Nutt, said planning for the potential return of individuals from the Middle East started in 2015 and was later formalised under an overarching operation named Kurrajong.
“Australian joint counter-terrorism teams methodically investigated all Australians who travelled to declared conflict areas and will ensure those who are alleged to have committed a criminal offence are put before the courts,” Nutt said.
“JCTTs include some of the most experienced national security investigators and analysts in our country.
“This remains an active investigation into very serious allegations.”
Nutt told a press conference earlier on Thursday that he also expected the 53-year-old to be charged with four commonwealth offences, including crimes against humanity for enslavement, possess a slave, use of a slave, and engaging in slave trading.
Ahmad was also expected to be charged with two commonwealth offences, including crimes against humanity for enslavement, and use of a slave.
The alleged offences each carry a maximum of 25 years in prison.
Nutt would not respond directly to a question about the women’s children or if there would be more arrests.
When asked about the fate of the children, he said: “All I can say is the safety of the community is the number one priority for all agencies involved.”
Passengers who were on the Sydney flight said they saw four officers board the plane and escort three people, including a man, woman, and child, off the plane.
A plane believed to be carrying Abbas, her daughters and eight children landed in Melbourne at about 5.30pm Thursday, after a journey that began in Damascus on Wednesday. Shortly after the plane landed in Melbourne, four Australian federal police officers were seen in the airport’s international arrival hall.
At about 8.20pm a man holding a young girl stepped into the arrivals hall exit at Melbourne airport.
A woman and a child walked behind the pair. The group were swarmed by media, with a group of men chaperoning them outside the airport.
Once outside, they entered a white mini bus parked in the airport’s pick up zone.
There was also a police presence in the arrivals hall at Sydney airport.
Guardian Australia has attempted to contact family members and legal representatives for all four women.
Lina Giraldo who was on the plane to Sydney from Doha said she saw three people sitting across from her – a man, a woman, and a child – escorted off the plane by four people.
She said two of the people were in suits and two others were in dark blue police uniforms. The cabin crew had made an announcement for the passengers to sit and wait before the passengers were escorted away, she said.
Another passenger in Sydney also said he saw the three people escorted from the plane.
The return to Australia caps a remarkable saga for the women, all of whom spent more than a decade in the Middle East, firstly under Islamic State rule, and then in squalid detention camps after escaping the violent end of the so-called caliphate.
But the possibility of criminal charges, and an increasingly fraught political debate about whether they pose a threat, means their resettlement will not be straightforward.
For their children, some of whom were born in detention camps, the immediate future is expected to involve a range of supports, many of them coordinated by state governments, including medical, educational, psychological and de-radicalisation programs.
On Wednesday morning, the government was alerted to the planned departure of the group, who left al-Roj and travelled to Damascus last month. They all hold Australian passports.
“As we have said many times – any members of this cohort who have committed crimes can expect to face the full force of the law,” the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said later that day.
The AFP commissioner, Krissy Barrett, said adults in the group faced arrest and possible charges when they arrived in Australia.
She said that AFP officers had been investigating the women since 2015, and had also collected evidence from Syria as part of their operation.
The charges could include terrorism offences such as entering or remaining in declared areas, and “crimes against humanity” offences such as engaging in slave trading.
The return of the cohort means there are now about 21 Australians in the detention camps, which local media report are being gradually evacuated and are to close.
Mat Tinkler, the CEO of Save the Children Australia, said the fact that other women and children had returned, and that other western nations had also successfully reintegrated their citizens, meant the “temperature should be dialled right down” in relation to the cohort.
“We need to focus on what is going to happen to these women when they arrive, and we’ve heard from the AFP commissioner today about that, and we also need to focus on giving these children the space to recover, to survive, to thrive,” Tinkler told the ABC on Wednesday.
“Two-thirds of this cohort that we’re talking about in Syria are children.
“There’s been a lot of focus on the women and the choices they may have made but we need to focus on these children and give them a chance of resuming a normal life in Australia.”
The group began their second attempt to travel home to Australia last month after a much larger cohort was turned back by Syrian authorities in February.
The US has pushed countries – including Australia – to repatriate citizens who had travelled to the Middle East to join the IS caliphate, but the issue has dogged successive governments.
Under Albanese, Labor had supported bringing the families home as recently as 2022 but the politics surrounding the return of the group has dramatically shifted since the December shootings at Bondi beach.
Albanese has refused to help in any way, saying the adults had “made their bed” and should suffer the consequences of their actions.