{"id":210253,"date":"2019-04-16T04:57:04","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T08:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=210253"},"modified":"2019-04-16T04:57:04","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T08:57:04","slug":"australia-pm-islamic-state-orphans-face-hurdles-to-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/04\/16\/australia-pm-islamic-state-orphans-face-hurdles-to-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia PM: Islamic State orphans face hurdles to return"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia was working with the Red Cross to repatriate three children and two grandchildren of slain Islamic State group fighter Khaled Sharrouf from the al-Hawl camp in northeastern Syria. (File Photo<\/a>: Scott Morrison (ScoMo)\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>CANBERRA, Australia \u2014 Australia’s prime minister said Tuesday that hurdles remain to repatriating three orphaned Australian children of a convicted terrorist from a Syrian refugee camp and that national security interests must come first.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia was working with the Red Cross to repatriate three children and two grandchildren of slain Islamic State group fighter Khaled Sharrouf from the al-Hawl camp in northeastern Syria.<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralia’s national security interests always come first,\u201d Morrison told Radio FiveAA. \u201cThere are a lot of hurdles to clear on this and Australians can be absolutely satisfied that we will follow those processes extremely closely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morrison is campaigning for his conservative coalition to be re-elected for a third three-year term on May 18. He argues that his government is stronger on national security and border protection than the centre-left opposition Labor Party.<\/p>\n

Opposition leader Bill Shorten said the offspring of the Sydney-born Sharrouf should not become an election issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese kids should not be a political football,\u201d Shorten told reporters. \u201cProbably if they can get a lot of love, then I suspect that’ll be the best way to help reabsorb them into Australian life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sydney grandmother of Sharrouf’s children, Karen Nettleton, has expressed frustration at the delay in returning the kids to Australia since they reached the camp in mid-March. She has made three trips to the Middle East in bids to bring them back to Sydney.<\/p>\n

Morrison suggested that the children would not return to Australian anytime soon. He declined to give reasons for the delay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are processes to be followed and there is still a long way to go on these things,\u201d Morrison told reporters.<\/p>\n

The eldest of Sharrouf’s three surviving children, 17-year-old Zaynab, said she is pregnant and fears giving birth in a tent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is my biggest fear, to give birth here,\u201d she told Australian Broadcasting Corp. \u201cBecause I’ve heard a lot of stories about people giving birth inside their tent and a lot of them haven’t worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

She shares her tent with her 16-year-old sister, Hoda, and 8-year-old brother, Humzeh. Zaynab also has her two children with her \u2014 Ayesha, 3, and Fatima, 2.<\/p>\n

Nettleton said she was told by Australian authorities that the family had to cross the border to Turkey before Australian officials would help them.<\/p>\n

Zaynab said the siblings should not be blamed for their predicament.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren’t the ones that chose to come here in the first place. We were brought here by our parents, and now that our parents have gone … I want to live a normal life,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The siblings’ father in 2017 became the first dual national to be stripped of Australian citizenship for actions contrary to his allegiance to Australia.<\/p>\n

Sharrouf slipped out of Australia in 2013 on his brother’s passport because his own had been cancelled due to a conviction for his part in a thwarted terrorist attack plot in Australia. He was left with Lebanese citizenship.<\/p>\n

Sharrouf horrified the world in 2014 when he posted on social media a photograph of his young son clutching the severed head of a Syrian soldier.<\/p>\n

Then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry described that image as \u201cone of the most disturbing, stomach-turning, grotesque photographs ever displayed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sharrouf’s wife, Tara Nettleton, brought their five children from Sydney to Syria in 2014. She died in hospital a year later of a perforated intestine.<\/p>\n

Sharrouf and his two eldest sons \u2014 Abdullah, 12, and Zarqawi, 11 \u2014 were killed in an August 2017 air strike near Raqqa, at the time the Islamic State-group’s stronghold in Syria.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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