IS fighter Khaled Sharrouf’s family wants to return to Australia
THE family of notorious IS fighter Khaled Sharrouf reportedly wants to return to Australia, and relatives here have already hatched a plan.
National
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THE image of the seven-year-old son of Australian Islamic State fighter Khaled Sharrouf holding aloft a severed head repulsed the world. Now it appears the child, his siblings and their mother have had enough of life in the Caliphate and want to come home.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Sharrouf’s wife Tara Nettleton is trying to leave Syria and bring her five children back to Sydney.
The move comes as the Federal Government hardens its stance against homesick jihadists, threatening them with lengthy jail terms and even cancelling the citizenship of dual nationals found to be fighting for IS.
Security agencies reportedly tracked Ms Nettleton’s mother Karen on a trip to Malaysia in what is thought to be an attempt to get the family back on home soil.
There is no suggestion Sharrouf wants to return.
Sharrouf’s three young boys and two teenage daughters are considered by some senior security sources as victims of their father’s extremism, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. However, Ms Nettleton’s case is more complicated, given the role she is believed to have played in getting the children out of Australia in the first place.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has vowed she would face the full extent of the law.
“That’s what the Australian public expect. Crime will be punished,” he told reporters in Canberra this morning.
“Crime is crime is crime, and criminals will face the full severity of Australian law, whether they’re male or female,” Mr Abbott said.
He dismissed suggestions the family’s return could be used to discourage others taking up the IS cause.
“I’m afraid you don’t get off scot-free just because you say I’ve seen the error of my ways,” he said.
“If you commit serious crimes you should face serious punishment and as far as I’m concerned that will always be the case.” Mr Abbott also dismissed concerns about the couple’s children should their mother be jailed.
“There are criminals who go to jail all the time and they have children.”
Labor leader Bill Shorten agreed foreign fighters should face the full force of the law if they returned to Australia, but will seek more information from the government about the children’s fate.
“I cannot understand any parent who would take their children to these war zones,” he said.
Earlier this year the ABC’s Four Corners program aired allegations Sharrouf, along with another Australian jihadist Mohamed Elomar, of buying, raping and torturing slave girls.
One of the woman told the program: “At night he was taking a girl downstairs, and when the girl returned she’d tell us, ‘He told me you have to marry me or else I will sell you, and if you say anything to my wife I will sell you or kill you’.”
Another described how they would beat the slave girls and “after sleeping with them for one night, they’d sell them to someone else”.
Sharrouf left Australia on his brothers passport in December 2013. Since then he has posted appalling images on social media accounts — some including his children. The images have shown severed heads, executions about to take place and Sharrouf proudly holding guns, even allowing his children to handle the weapons.
He was convicted of terrorism offences in 2005. He served three years and nine months for his role in a plot in which 18 men were convicted over plans to attack targets in NSW and Victoria.
Meanwhile, a former Australian resident has been arrested in Texas for conspiring to provide material support to terror group Islamic State.
US prosecutors say Asher Abid Khan, 20, was taken into custody on Tuesday without incident.
The criminal complaint alleges Khan and a friend devised a plan to travel to Turkey and on to Syria for the purpose of joining and waging jihad on behalf of IS, reported AAP.
If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in federal prison. A conviction also carries a possible $US250,000 fine.
Originally published as IS fighter Khaled Sharrouf’s family wants to return to Australia
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