Fri 25 September 2020:
Her four-year-old son and one-year-old daughter are being held at a child protection centre in the Turkish border province of Sanliurfa
Australia’s first Daesh bride, Zehra Duman, who left Melbourne to join the terrorist group has been jailed in Turkey for three years after fleeing a Syrian refugee camp with her two young children, Daily Mail Australia reports.
The 26-year-old was sentenced this week after being found guilty of recruiting brides to join Daesh and for disseminating the propaganda of the terrorist group on social media.
Her four-year-old son and one-year-old daughter are being held at a child protection centre in the Turkish border province of Sanliurfa where they have been since 17 July, according to a document from the local Family Labour and Social Services Provincial Directorate.
According to SBS News, Duman’s mother Ozlem Coskun, who lives in Melbourne, said her daughter had sent word to her in mid-2017 that she wanted to try to escape Syria and return to Australia.
In 2019, Coskun pleaded for the Australian government to bring her daughter and two grandchildren back home, saying she would take care of the children.
Duman had become a key Daesh recruiter on social media, posing with machine guns and on the bonnets of luxury cars stolen by the terrorists.
In July, the Australian government resisted US pressure and announced that it would not repatriate the wives and children of Daesh fighters stranded in Syrian refugee camps, citing concerns over coronavirus and security.
Speaking in Washington at the main annual forum for consultations between Australia and the United States (AUSMIN), Foreign Minister Marise Payne refused to budge on her country’s position on Australian citizens that left the country to join the Daesh militant group.
British citizen, Shamima Begum, who was born to Bangladeshi parents and left London in 2015 to join Deash when she was 15 and went to Syria via Turkey with two school friends, won her appeal to be allowed to return to the UK in July.
In Syria, Begum married a Daesh fighter.
Despite calls by human rights organisations and the US for Western nations to repatriate their citizens and put them on trial back in their home countries, many nations have refused or been reluctant to do so, citing the alleged security risk they would pose.
Article Originally Published in Middle East Monitor CLICK HERE
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
