Last Australians Leave Syria Camp Holding Suspected Militant Relatives

The last Australian women and children held in a northeast Syria camp housing relatives of suspected foreign militants left the site this week seeking to return home, a camp official told AFP on Saturday. “Twenty-one Australians left Roj camp” on Thursday — seven women and 14 children, aged eight to 14 — the Kurdish administrative official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Syrian Kurdish forces control the Roj camp, where relatives of suspected foreign militants including Westerners have been held for years. “They were handed over to the Syrian government and transferred to the Syrian capital with the aim of sending them to Australia,” the official said, adding: “There are no more Australians remaining in Roj.” Earlier this month, 13 more Australians — four women and their nine children — flew home from Syria. Two of the women, a mother and a daughter, were arrested on arrival, with police accusing them of having kept a female slave after travelling to Syria in 2014 to support the ISIS, and of crimes against humanity. They had been detained by Kurdish forces in 2019. A third woman was also arrested on arrival in Australia and charged with entering a restricted area and joining a “terrorist organization.” The fourth woman was not arrested. Small groups of women and children flew back to Australia in 2019, 2022 and 2025.