SHE’S NOW FREE TO RETURN TO AUSTRALIA… – Hodan Abby, an Australian woman accused of acting as a Sharia law enforcer inside a Syrian refugee camp after leaving to join ISIS, is reportedly free to fly back to Australia.
An Islamic State-linked Australian woman granted permission to return home from Syria is accused of being a sharia law ‘enforcer’ for the terrorist group in a new report.
Hodan Abby is the final known Australian woman among the cohort of so-called ‘ISIS brides’ remaining in Syria’s al-Roj refugee camp.
She cleared a legal hurdle allowing her to fly back to Australia last month, when the government lifted a temporary exclusion order that barred her from entering the border for two years.
On Monday, an ABC report quoted a security source to allege that Abby acted as a ‘judge’ or ‘enforcer’ of sharia law – the religious law or moral code of Islam – in the camp.
That reportedly involved Abby allegedly threatening women in the camp into wearing the black, full-body Islamic veil known as the niqab.
‘She would try to enforce Islamic dress…. she made people go to their tents (and) make them repent any supposed sins they committed, to say the Shahada (Islamic declaration of faith),’ he said.
During a breakfast TV interview on Monday, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke signalled that Abby may be reconsidering a return to Australia – given other brides have been arrested and charged following their flights back home.
Burke also said there was a reason the government had sought to ban Abby from returning to Australia.
+3
View gallery
A returning ISIS bride, Janai Safar, is seen pictured in Sydney following her return earlier this year
‘There is a reason why only one (bride) met the threshold for an exclusion order,’ Burke told ABC News Breakfast.
‘Anybody who made a decision to go and join ISIS made an absolutely horrific decision and we’ve got no interest in doing anything to help any of them back but certainly if you also reach the threshold of exclusion order then… you are in a different situation to the rest of the cohort.’
Abby was originally stopped from boarding a flight to Australia with a group of women in May, but she was issued a return permit last month.
Burke said: ‘Having seen some people who returned be arrested on arrival at the airport, she’d be weighing up the different things that she’s done and would be making a decision as to whether or not she ever returns.’
Burke confirmed that authorities were aware of her activities and were actively monitoring her location.
He added that if Abby did choose to return, she may be either detained or charged later on.
‘Sometimes people have been arrested at the airport, sometimes – as you’ve seen as well – we’ve continued to collect evidence after their arrival and the arrests have happened later,’ he said.
‘Anybody who has been part of that ideology gets the full attention from our agencies that the public would expect to keep people safe.’
+3
View gallery
Unidentified women in the al-Roj detention camp in Syria, clad in the IS-favoured niqab, a garb that covers the full body
+3
View gallery
Chaotic scenes at Melbourne airport are seen above as a group of ISIS brides arrived home on May 7, 2026
Abby, originally from western Sydney, has also been accused of beating a Yazidi slave who was bought by her husband and raped while aged nine or 10.
Pressed on a separate report that Australian men who travelled to the Middle East to fight for Islamic State may be freed from prison in Iraq, Burke said it would be ‘really tough’ to meet the legal threshold to stop them returning home.
Thirteen Australians were currently jailed in Iraq but they were being interviewed by foreign officials and may be released, the Australian newspaper reported.
‘If someone’s a citizen, eventually they can come back,’ Mr Burke told Seven’s Sunrise program.
‘At the moment, every single one of these people is locked up and I’ve got no problem with that being the status quo,’ he said.
ISIS
