Upholding the rule of law is what separates “our society from the lawless barbarity of ISIS”, Anthony Albanese has said while being pressed on the return of four Australian women allegedly linked to the terrorist group.
Two women arrested upon arrival at Melbourne’s international airport overnight were on Friday morning charged with crimes against humanity.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) allege they travelled to Syria in 2014 with their husbands and that one was complicit in buying a slave while the other knowingly kept a slave.
A third woman was arrested in Sydney and was charged overnight, while the fourth returnee was not charged.
The Prime Minister said the “rule of law means if you’re an Australian citizen, you have some entitlements”, such as a passport and the right to return to Australia.
“We provided no support for these people. They were not brought back,” he told a press conference in Melbourne.
“It is correct that the US government and others urged us to do so – we chose to make our own decisions as a sovereign state and not to provide them with any support, because I have absolutely zero sympathy for these people.”
Mr Albanese added that he did have “sympathy” for the Australian children accompanying the women, calling them “victims of decisions that their parents have made”.
He also called on the public to trust Australia’s security and policing agencies, noting that a “few of them are in the clink” in line with a decade’s old preparations for the women’s return.
“They got arrested, and they’ll be charged today,” he said.
“I have faith in our authorities, in the Australian Federal Police, in ASIO, in ASIS – in all of our security agencies.
“I’ll back them. I’ll allow them to do their job, and that’s precisely what they have done over a long period of time, including preparing for any potential arrival that occurred.
“As we’ve said, Australian citizens do have rights, but we have a right as a government to ensure that the law is upheld, and these people will face the full force of the law.”
However, the Coalition has insisted the latest returnees are different to the more than 40 ISIS-linked individuals who returned to Australia when it was in government.
Speaking to reporters in the by-election battleground of Farrer, Angus Taylor said Labor had “lost control of the borders”.
“Labor didn’t just let them come back – they helped them come back,” the Opposition Leader said, contradicting the AFP deputy commissioner.
“And they’ve done that by doing DNA tests, by issuing and distributing passports.
“They only imposed one temporary exclusion order. They could have done far more than that.”
The women have spent much of the last seven years in camps for foreign ISIS supporters stranded in Syria after the caliphate’s collapse.
Monitors have declared the camps breeding grounds for Islamist extremism.
