Ministers quiet on bringing ‘lost boy’ Yusuf Zahab home from Syria

Human rights campaigners call for Australian ‘lost boy’ Yusuf Zahab, locked up since he was 14 and recently found alive in a jail cell, to be brought home from Syria.

Yusuf Zahab. Picture: Human Rights Watch

The Albanese government is ­declining to comment on whether “lost boy” Yusuf Zahab will be ­repatriated to Australia, as human rights campaigners call for the Sydney teenager to be brought home from Syria.

A youth believed to be Yusuf has been located in a jail in the Syrian city of Hasakah, 18 months after he went missing and was ­believed killed after an Islamic State attack on the prison where he was being held.

Now aged about 19, he was 14 when he was locked up in March 2019 following the fall of Islamic State’s last redoubt in the village of Baghouz. He was taken by his older brothers to Syria when he was about 10. He has never been charged or accused of a crime.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil declined to comment about Yusuf, who is believed to have been identified by his Kurdish jailers in September last year. A video of the youth identifying himself as Yusuf Zahab, and naming his parents, is dated September 15, 2022, and was recently handed to the Australian government. Immigration Minister Andrew Giles also declined to comment, saying he had not been aware of the issue until The ­Australian reported it, and that he was yet to seek a briefing from Ms O’Neil.

When asked if he was comfortable with Australians as young as 14 being detained without charge overseas, he said: “These reports in today’s media have only really been around in my knowledge for a couple of hours. I haven’t had a chance to receive a briefing.”

Letta Tayler of Human Rights Watch in New York said “it would be a joyous development if Yusuf Zahab is indeed alive.’’ Ms Tayler, who was one of the last people to hear from Yusuf when he sent her voice messages from the prison via a smuggled phone as Islamic State attacked, said authorities in northeast Syria and Australia should immediately confirm his identity, and bring him home.

“Amid the celebrations if this news is confirmed, we should not lose sight of the number of troubling questions that this case raises,’’ she said. “Where was Yusuf all this time, and what did the authorities know and when?’’

A photograph of Yusuf which appears to have been taken in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the al-Sina’a prison in January 2022 showed him bloodied and bandaged but apparently not ­seriously injured. However, he was not seen or heard from again, and Kurdish officials told his family they no longer had him.

Ms Tayler asked if he had been treated for his wounds or for the tuberculosis that he was believed to have suffered.

“How many other boys in northeast Syria are being held incommunicado as sons of ISIS suspects, never charged with a crime, presumed by their loved ones to be missing or dead,’’ she said.

While the Morrison government returned nine Australian children from Syria in 2019, and the Albanese government repatriated four women and their 13 children in 2022, there has been no move to return the approximately dozen men who are held in the prisons near Hasakah set up to house Islamic State fighters and members. The Australian government is also not repatriating children who have mothers in Syria.

While Yusuf’s mother Aminah remains in al-Roj camp, as does his sister Sumaya, he will not be placed with them as he is now an adult. Givenhe was a child when detained, and can be ­returned to Australia without being separated from his mother, it is thought an opportunity does exist for the government to bring him home.

UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism Fionnuala Ni Aolain, who has previously warned that children of Islamic State members face ­“cradle to the grave’’ arbitrary ­detention, said she was “deeply concerned about Yusuf Zahab.