Sharrouf children face a different world on return

Carefree days of surf and sand are a lifetime away for Zaynab, Hoda and Humzeh Sharrouf - now holed up in Syria.

Sharrouf Children

These carefree days of surf and sand must seem a lifetime away to Zaynab, Hoda and Humzeh Sharrouf — now holed up somewhere in Raqqa, northern Syria.

This picture was taken on the NSW central coast a few years ago, before their mother, Tara Nettleton, snuck out of Australia with her five children, in February last year, to join her terrorist husband, Khaled Sharrouf.

Zaynab turned 14 on Monday. She was married to Sharrouf’s best friend and fellow terrorist Mohamad Elomar, now dead. Her father, Sharrouf, is also possibly dead.

Her grandmother, Karen Nettleton, who released this and other photos along with a letter Zaynab sent to her, told The Australian this week she feared her granddaughter might be pregnant to Elomar.

Zaynab’s younger brother, Abdullah, now 10, was pictured last year holding the severed head of a Syrian soldier, an image that shocked the world and came to symbolise the brutality of Islamic State.

They’ve looked on as four terrified Yazidi slave girls were brought into the compound where they lived.

Now they would like to come home to Australia. But what will become of them?

Terrorism expert Greg Barton said: “These are young children, they are innocents. They deserve both our sympathy and our help, but getting them out of IS territory is not going to be easy. It is not clear whether it is even possible to help.”

He said the situation in Raqqa was extremely dangerous and there had been reports of executions of foreigners trying to leave Islamic State. While there was no doubt the children were innocent, there was also no doubt that, under the changed legislation, their mother, Tara would fit into the category of having been in Raqqa “and the onus is on her to prove that she wasn’t serving Islamic State”.

“Her own social media posts would indicate she would have trouble making her own defence case there,” Professor Barton said.

He said the children could be placed in foster care, or with trusted relatives, while their mother served time in jail.

The care and counselling these children would need to receive, if they returned, was exceedingly important, and taking them back was not without dangers, he said.