Australian court rules in favor of govt over Syria repatriations

LONDON: Australia does not have a legal obligation to repatriate 31 of its citizens from Syria’s Al-Roj detention camp, a court has ruled, The Guardian reported on Friday.

The Australian branch of Save the Children had launched the case, representing 11 Australian women and their 20 children in the camp, and arguing that the federal government was required to repatriate them.

Most of the women have been detained in Al-Roj, in Syria’s northeast, for four years, and have not been charged with a crime. Some of their children were born in the camp and have never left.

The women are the former wives or children of Daesh fighters who were killed or jailed during the group’s downfall.

Save the Children Australia argued in its case that the federal government had de facto control of the women and children’s detention, citing previous repatriation missions from Syria and the willingness of local authorities to accept them.

The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria is responsible for overseeing the detentions, together with the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Justice Mark Moshinsky, in a judgment on the case delivered in Melbourne’s federal court, said that the Australian government lacked control of the region and dismissed the case.

The judgment said: “The court has concluded that the respondents do not have control over the detention of the relative women and children. Accordingly this part of the application has been rejected.”

Save the Children Australia’s case also cited a request by the AANES that coalition countries repatriate their citizens from the camps.

But the government, in court filings, said it was not responsible for Australian citizens traveling to Syria and being detained, given that Al-Roj is under the “absolute discretion” of the AANES.

Matt Tinkler, Save the Children Australia CEO, said: “These children are innocent. They have done nothing wrong. When I saw these children, some of them were just hanging on and that was over a year ago.

“These children just want to get on and live a normal life at home here in Australia to go to school to do all the things that we take for granted here.”

The organization will appeal the decision in order to get the Australian government to “do the right thing.”

In 2019, Australia repatriated eight orphaned children including a pregnant teenager. And in 2022, four women and 13 children were returned to New South Wales.

Tinkler said: “The Australian government does not need a legal ruling in order to do the right thing as they have demonstrated in the past, on a number of occasions, that they can repatriate Australian citizens to safety.

“While innocent and highly vulnerable children remain in one of the most difficult places in the world to be a child, the Australian government should really just get on and do the right thing.”