A Melbourne family accused of buying a teen slave captured by Islamic State for $10,000 knew she was being purchased for sex and housework in a home where guns and terror flags were put on display, police say.
ISIS bride Zeinab Ahmad, 31, appeared in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, a month after returning to Australia for the first time in more than a decade, after travelling to Syria with family, including mother Kawsar Abbas, 54, and father Mohammed Ahmad.
Police allege that while in Islamic State territory, Ahmad and her mother knowingly possessed a slave for more than a year, from June 2017 to November 2018, as part of the terrorist group’s widespread, systematic attack on the Yazidi people.
In opposing a bail application by Zeinab Ahmad, Detective Senior Constable Marc Clendenning said he held serious concerns for the safety and welfare of the community if she was released after living in Syria since 2014, where she was subject to Islamic law and entered into marriages with multiple men.
He said the whereabouts of her current husband, an Egyptian-born man, was unknown and her father was thought to be alive and living in Iraq.
“She’s never explicitly renounced or said she no longer supports IS since her surrender to the Kurdish forces,” Clendenning told the court.
“She was employed by Islamic State, earning a regular salary. She possessed an Islamic State ID card.
“There are no bail conditions that will sufficiently ameliorate the risk and bail should not be granted.”
The court heard at aged 15, the complainant was taken captive and sold and traded as a sex slave among 17 different IS members.
In 2017, she said she was bought by the Ahmad family for about $US10,000 ($14,000) after being inspected for marriage.
The accused woman’s father told the girl he had bought her for “the purpose of raping” and housework. She then slept in the same bedroom as Zeinab Ahmad and went on to be abused by the man multiple times.
The complainant said the father wore military clothes and went to fight battles with other Australians.
During the physical and sexual attacks on her, she said the rest of his family were present in the house as she called for help and tried to fight him off.
She said the accused woman – aged 22 and 23 at the time – used a different name and had a Glock pistol, treated her very badly and ordered her to do things for her around the house like she was the deputy.
The police informant said the Ahmad family appeared to have IS privileges not afforded to others.
Clendenning said that in 2013, Islamic State militants began to take centre stage in the Middle East, with the Australian government listing it as a proscribed terrorist organisation in June that year.
The terror group accepted pledges of allegiance from people overseas as it worked to capture and control territory until 2016 when it began to lose possession of land in Iraq.
Between May and November 2014, the court heard various members of the Ahmad family began travelling to the Middle East on Australian passports, telling authorities they were planning to holiday in Turkey.
Zeinab Ahmad left Melbourne on November 4, 2014, with her husband, making their way to Syria as a “family unit” in December 2014. She had been granted Australian citizenship two years earlier. Police believe her husband was killed in Syria in May 2016.
While overseas, Clendenning said the Ahmad family maintained regular contact with family in Australia using Facebook Messenger, and at times WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram.
In messages read out to the court, Clendenning said the accused made a number of Facebook posts including one that accused Australia of having “more blood on their hands than ISIS have on their knives”.
She also spoke of her living conditions in Syria and that “our brothers are out their defending our region”.
When her husband was killed, she posted tributes including that he was the love of her life and that he left the house to get food but never returned.
“My legs felt as though they were crushing beneath me, I just wanted him to walk through the door and hug me and tell me it’s all OK,” she wrote.
“Then I remembered this was his dream. This is why he migrated, for martyrdom.”
Clendenning said the accused later messaged family, telling them she was being paid $48 a month to help orphans and widows, which police believe was financed by Islamic State.
Photographs sent to family depicted an Islamic State flag hanging on the wall of the Ahmad family home and an assault rifle on the living room floor.
“The Ahmad family hold clear allegiances to Islamic State,” Clendenning said.
Zeinab Ahmad, 31, and her mother Abbas, 54, were among four women and nine children who arrived in Australia last month after spending years in a north-east Syrian refugee camp.
While Abbas is accused of trading a person in an area of Syria near the Iraqi border in June 2017, both Abbas and Ahmad are accused of illegally using and exercising ownership over the slave until November 2018.
The hearing, before Chief Magistrate Lisa Hannan, continues on Friday with Zeinab Ahmad’s defence team to make submissions on why she should be released.
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