A woman linked to Islamic State arrested and charged with terrorism offences has four children, sources close to the families say, one of whom was wounded by a gunshot in the final days of the so-called caliphate in 2019.
Australian Federal Police have announced they have charged Rayann El Houli with entering or remaining in a declared area and being a member of a terror organisation. She will appear in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Thursday afternoon.
El Houli returned to Australia from Syria with her sister last September after the pair escaped the al-Hawl detention camp and made their own way to Lebanon before being issued with a passport at the embassy in Beirut.
AFP Deputy Commissioner Hilda Sirec said the charges announced on Thursday came after searches in the Melbourne suburbs of Broadmeadows and North Fitzroy. The charges carry a sentence of up to 10 years.
They are the same charges as those laid against Janai Safar, who returned to Sydney from Syria this month.
The arrest and charging of the woman who returned to Australia eight months ago comes amid a furious political atmosphere surrounding the so-called ISIS brides, and as the opposition lashes Labor for allegedly “rolling out the welcome mat” for a group of 19 women and children who arrived in Sydney and Melbourne on Tuesday night.
Sirec said the latest arrest should be seen as a sign of the agency’s determination to continue “highly complex” investigations for as long as it took.
“I also want to underscore that a period of time without charges being laid is not an indicator that the investigations have ceased,” Sirec said, announcing the charges against El Houli.
“I won’t outline our operational strategies or who could face charges in the future, but I will confirm investigations are continuing in all recent adult female returnees who spent time in internally displaced persons camps in Syria.”
Police needed to be able to take the time and effort to make sure that the evidence was admissible and to a legal standard, she added.
Sirec would not comment on how the investigations were being undertaken and declined to answer a question about whether women who had returned from the camps would be interviewed and asked for evidence about each other.
She also would not comment on what terror threat was posed by Hodan Abby, who was prevented from leaving Syria this week because of a temporary exclusion order imposed by the Albanese government.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said extensive community consultation had been done ahead of the return of the Islamic-State linked women who have returned to Australia from Syria.
“The government is not involved in settling people at all. We have had citizens return, as we’ve had citizens have self-managed returns before we came to office, including 45 men who had gone there to fight,” Burke said.
“But in terms of the consultation with the community, I can give examples of consultation that has been very powerful that has happened in the lead up to when it was first reported that these individuals might seek to return,” he said, which included the Assyrian and Catholic communities.
“I’d also add to that, probably no meeting more powerful than when a delegation came here from Wagga, from the Yazidi community, which involved one woman who, from memory, she would have been 19, had herself effectively been a slave,” he said.
El Houli returned to Australia last September with her four children and her sister, causing a political furore at the time. Then-acting opposition home affairs spokeswoman Michaelia Cash accused the government of a cover-up when it refused to confirm details about the group of six.
Michael Bachelard is a senior writer and former deputy editor and investigations editor of The Age. He has worked in Canberra, Melbourne and Jakarta, has written two books and won multiple awards for journalism, including the Gold Walkley.Connect via X or email.
Brittany Busch is a federal politics reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners
Discover more from PressNewsAgency
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.