Dozens of Australian ISIL relatives freed from Syria’s Roj camp 

Kurdish authorities in Syria have released 34 Australian relatives of ISIL (ISIS) fighters who had been held in a camp in northern Syria, saying they would be flown to Australia from Damascus.

A director of ⁠the Roj camp said on Monday that Australian citizens had been handed over to members of their families who had come to Syria for the release.

“Today, we are handing over 11 families who hold Australian nationality to their relatives,” Hakmieh Ibrahim told the AFP news agency.

“These families are the last Australians in the Roj camp,” she added. Ibrahim revealed that 2,201 people with about 50 nationalities were still residing in the camp.

They were put on small buses for Damascus before their departure from the country. A military vehicle escorted the buses.

Thousands of people believed to be linked to ISIL have been held at Roj and a second camp, al-Hol, since the armed group was driven from its final territorial foothold in Syria in 2019.

Syrian government forces took control of al-Hol last month during fighting with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which led to state forces seizing most of the territory in northeastern Syria previously controlled by Kurdish forces.

The Australian government said in a statement that it will not repatriate people from Syria.

“Our security agencies have been monitoring – and continue to monitor – the ⁠situation in Syria to ensure they are prepared for any Australians ⁠seeking to return to Australia.

“People in this cohort need to know that if they have committed a crime and if they return to Australia they will be met with the full force of the law.

“The safety ⁠of Australians and the protection of Australia’s national interests remain the overriding priority.”

The British NGO Save The Children warned in January that 20,000 children in camps in northeastern Syria faced being “harmed, exploited or coerced by armed actors” as the security situation in the region declines and called on countries to repatriate their civilians from the camps.

Governments around the world, including the United Kingdom, have been slow to bring back their citizens. The most well-known resident of the Roj camp, UK-born Shamima Begum, was 15 when she and two other girls fled from London in 2015 to marry ISIL fighters in Syria.

In 2019, the UK government revoked her citizenship soon after she was discovered in a detention camp in Syria.

Since then, she has challenged the decision, which was turned down by an appeals court in February 2024. Born in Britain to Bangladeshi parents, Begum does not hold Bangladeshi citizenship. She is still in the Roj camp.