An ISIS bride who was previously excluded from Australia has been given a travel permit by the Albanese Labor government.
Islamic extremist Hodan Abby, who has a nine-year-old daughter, was earlier this year placed under a two-year temporary exclusion order preventing her return to Australia on national security grounds.
But Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke confirmed she had been given a travel permit on Wednesday, and claimed the government was legally unable to refuse the woman’s application.
“We received the final advice yesterday that we can no longer have an exclusion condition any longer for her,” Mr Burke told ABC News.
Mr Burke said security services would put Abby under a “very high level of surveillance”, and said she and her child were the last two ISIS-linked Australian citizens remaining in Syrian refugee camps.
“The conditions that then do apply to her are everything that is possible,” he said.
“For example, she will have to report and we will have to know where she lives, where she works, where she studies, if she books a ticket to anywhere.”
Mr Burke said she would be banned from using the internet or any telecommunications device for “any reason” without 24 hours’ notice to authorities.
Two cohorts of 32 ISIS brides and children flew into Australia from Syria last month, and Abby attempted to board a plane along with the second group but was blocked due to the temporary exclusion order.
Three women from the first group were arrested on arrival and charged with offences including “crimes of humanity – slavery” and joining a terrorist organisation.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Mr Burke have repeatedly denied facilitating the return of the ISIS brides, but have faced criticism for allowing them to obtain passports and not doing more to prevent them from entering the country.
A poll in February found that 64% of voters opposed allowing the wives and family members of ISIS terrorists to return to Australia, with just 15% in support.
Both ISIS bride groups were able to fly back to Australia thanks to the efforts of Jewish retired human rights lawyer Robert Van Aalst, who masterminded efforts to extract them from the notorious Al-Roj camp in northeastern Syria.
Some of the brides and children have spent time in a different refugee camp, Al-Hol, a radicalisation hub where jihadist women hid teenage boys in tunnels and sexually abused them to get pregnant, raising national security concerns in the wake of the ISIS-inspired Bondi Islamic terrorist attack.
Header image: Left, Australian ISIS brides with AK-47s in Syria (Facebook). Right, an ISIS brides and child leaving Al-Roj earlier this year (supplied).
