Scott Morrison rules out extracting children of ISIS terrorist Khaled Sharrouf from Syrian refugee camp

PM rules out extracting children of ISIS terrorist Khaled Sharrouf from a Syrian refugee camp.

Khaled Sharrouf’s children, from left, Hoda, Abdullah, Hamza, Zarqawi and Zaynab, in 2014.

Scott Morrison has ruled out saving the three surviving children of notorious Islamic State terrorist Khaled Sharrouf from a Syrian refugee camp.

The Prime Minister said not “one Australian life” would be put in danger to save the Islamic State converts and he would continue to push for tighter controls on foreign fighters trying to return to Australia.

“I’m not going to put one Australian life at risk to try and extract people from these dangerous situations,” he said in Canberra today.

“It’s appalling that Australians have gone and fought against our values and our way of life and peace-loving countries of the world in joining the Daesh fight, I think it’s even more despicable that they put their children in the middle of it.

“We currently have legislation we have been seeking to pass on temporary exclusion orders which would enable us to manage effectively, like a parole scheme, if people were to come back into the country.”

Three of Sharrouf’s children are believed to have survived the final onslaught on Islamic’s State’s last bolthole and are among nine Australian families detained in a Syrian refugee camp.

Kurdish administrative documents seen by The Australian list Sharrouf’s children — daughters Zaynab, 18, and Hoda, 16, and son Hamza, 10 — as having left the ISIS base at Baghouz in northeastern Syria just over a week before it was overrun by Kurdish fighters.

The three are reported to be confined, along with a further eight Australian women and their children, in the Kurdish-controlled­ Al-Hawl camp, which houses 70,000 refugees in northeast Syria near the border with Iraq.

Among the Australian Islamic State families, there are 19 children, with five younger than two and 12 younger than 10 years old.

According to the Kurdish administ­ration documents, Zaynab now has two daughters, aged three and one, and both are with her in the camp.

Khaled Sharrouf with, from left, Zarqawi, Abdullah and Hamza.

Proof of the Sharrouf family’s embrace of ISIS practices emerged in 2014 when a photograph was posted on Twitter showing eldest son Abdullah, then 9, holding the severed head of a Syrian soldier. The picture contained the caption: “That’s my boy.”

Sharrouf also tweeted a photo of himself, Abdullah, Hamza and Zarqawi dressed in camouflage and brandishing weapons.

Abdullah and Zarqawi, 8, are believed to have died with their ­father in 2017 when the car they were in was targeted in an airstrike near Raqqa.

Among the Australian women in the refugee camp, eight, including Zaynab, describe themselves as widows. The ninth lists herself as married. The names of their husband­s are not revealed.

Most of them are recorded as arriving at the Al-Hawl camp ­between March 14 and 16. One is listed as arriving last Monday, three days after Kurdish forces supported by coalition airstrikes, overran Baghouz.

Among the women is a Sydney mother whose family was linked to a failed plot to supply weapons to Islamic State. Another of the women told authorities she came from Melbourne.

The large number of young children could lead to pressure on the Australian government to ­repatriate the families from the camp, which has been swamped by the number of refugees fleeing the fighting and is running out of food, medical supplies and shelter.

Extensive counselling would likely be required for the Sharrouf children after enduring years under Islamic State rule.

They were removed from Aust­ralia by their Sydney-based mother, Tara Nettleton, in 2014 and then publicly immersed in the horrors of ISIS. In 2015, it was reported that Zaynab, then aged 14, had married her ­father’s best friend, Australian ­terrorist Mohamed Elomar.

Elomar, who had once tweeted that he was selling female Yazidi slaves, was reportedly killed in an airstrike in 2015.

The Sharrouf children in Sydney.

Nettleton, the matriarch of the Sharrouf family, was reported to have died of complications caused by an illness in 2016.

Her Sydney-based mother, Karen, called on the federal government to help her surviving grandchildren return to Australia.

“They’re with other Australian and foreign fighters (in the camps) and they shouldn’t be in amongst all of that,” she said.

During her time in Raqqa, Zaynab posted images to social media, including one showing a group of women dressed in burkas and waving assault rifles while sitting on the back of a white BMW car. The post was captioned: “Chillin in the khilafah, loving life.”

Last night a spokeswoman for Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton­ said the minister would not comment on the revelations.

But last month his spokesman told the ABC that the Australian government’s ability to confirm the identity of Australians in Syria was extremely limited.

“Australian officials cannot ­facilitate the safe passage of ­people out of the conflict zones,” the spokesman said.

“Anyone fighting with or providing support or associating with ISIS or other terrorist groups has committed a serious crime and will face the consequences should they return to Australia.

“However, the Morrison government is determined to deal with these people as far from our shores as possible and ensure that any who do return do so with forewarning and into the hands of the appropriate agencies. We have legislation before the parliament which will enable us to ­impose temporary exclusion orders preventing these people from returning to Australia until their actions and circumstances can be considered on a case-by-case basis.”

The Al-Hawl camp in Syria. Picture: AFP

That approach has been ­echoed by Mr Morrison.

The emergence of the families from the heavily bombed ISIS encampment at Baghouz raises questions about the survival of dozens of other Australians who joined the terrorist organisation.

Last week The Australian found Sydney nursing student Janai Safar and her two-year-old son in another Kurdish refugee camp.

Ms Safar made it clear she did not wish to return to Australia.

And in February, Australian woman Zehra Duman was filmed leaving Baghouz.

She later gave an interview to the ABC from the Al-Hawl camp in which she pleaded to be allowed to return to Australia as she was struggling to feed her child.

With Richard Ferguson