Two flights have landed, and AFP officers were waiting as it was revealed exactly who was getting arrested.

ISIS-linked Australians board flights to Australia

Thirteen Australians linked to ISIS have boarded flights to Australia after fleeing a…

Two Australian ISIS brides scheduled to land in Melbourne airport tonight after years in exile will be arrested by the AFP as soon as they clear customs.

News.com.au has confirmed that grandmother Kawsar Abbas, 54 and one of her two adult daughters will be arrested over allegations that two Yazidi women have made that they were kept as slaves in the war zone. They arrived at 5.30pm on Thursday evening.

Another ISIS bride, Janai Safar, who landed in Sydney roughly 10 minutes later with her son, will also be arrested in relation to entering or remaining in a declared terrorist area.

Speaking on ABC TV, Education Minister Jason Clare said the women would face the full force of the law on arrival in Australia.

Some ISIS brides arrived into Melbourne airport aboard a Qatar flight at 5.30pm Thursday. Picture: Jason Edwards
“I’ve got faith in the Australian Federal Police. They know what they’re doing. This is not their first rodeo,’’ he said.

“When the Liberal Party let 40 foreign fighters into the country, they took the steps that they needed to take to keep Australians safe.

“And I trust, in the words of the AFP Commissioner yesterday, when she said that some of these women will be arrested when they arrive and others will be subject to further investigation.”

Kawsar Abbas (above, in 2015) is on a flight with her two ISIS bride children back to Melbourne. Picture: Facebook

Janai Safar. Picture: Facebook (2012)
Mr Clare also confirmed that 9 children who are returning will be provided access to special programs to re-educate the children against extremist views.

“Well, kids don’t get to choose who their parents are, and these children have seen sorts of things that no child should ever be exposed to, and it’s going to take time for these children to reintegrate into Australian society,’’ he said.

“These are the sort of programs that the Australian Federal Police run, and I would expect that the Federal Police would want to run countering violent extremism programs with all of the children that return.”

‘Soldier of Allah’: ISIS bride’s gushing posts

The mother of two Australian ISIS brides arriving back in Melbourne tonight previously described her son as a “soldier of Allah” in social media posts.

Kawsar Abbas and her two adult daughters Zahra and Zeinab are set to touch down in Victoria this afternoon with a large group of children.

Some of these children were born in the Middle East after the women married Islamic State fighters and have spent years in Syrian refugee camps.

AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett said police would be waiting to arrest and charge some of the members when they arrived in Australia on the Qatar Airways flight from Doha.

“Some individuals will be arrested and charged. Some will face continued investigations when they arrive in Australia,” she said today.

Abbas’s husband, Mohammed Ahmad, is accused of keeping two women as Yazidi slaves. He denied those allegations from behind bars in a Syrian prison in 2023.

In 2014, the same year the family travelled to the region for their son Omar’s wedding, Abbas posted the following message on Facebook.

“I got a beautiful message this morning from someone I don’t know, a revert who told me Omar is a true soldier of Allah,’’ she said.

“Yes dear sis, a soldier who won’t walk away from the cry of the orphans. May Allah protect you both and unite us soon.”

Her husband Mohammed Ahmad is locked up in a Syrian prison. He is accused of keeping two women as slaves. Credit: ABC News

A Yazidi woman named Sarab (above) claimed she was kept as a slave by Mohammed. Credit: ABC

Their father Mohammad Ahmad has always insisted he was doing charity work in the region before his two sons Omar and Ahmad joined him overseas. They both died in the conflict.

However Mohammad Ahmad, who remains in a Syrian jail, has been accused of keeping a Yazidi woman named Sarab as a slave. Sarab says she was sent to the family when she was 13.

She knew the Australian man as Abu Omar, a name that the grandmother also uses for her husband on social media.

“It was very unpleasant. I was their slave and they could do whatever they wanted to me,’’ Sarab told the ABC.

“My life was controlled by them. It felt like my existence did not matter.”

After initially telling the ABC in 2019 that his son had a slave but she was treated as “a daughter” Mohammed Ahmad now says he never even saw his son’s Yazidi slave.

“That’s the accusation, it’s not true,” the man told the ABC in 2023.

Kawsar Abbas described her son Omar, who is now dead, as a “true soldier of Allah”. Picture: Facebook

Zhara Ahmad is on a flight home to Victoria touching down tonight. Credit: SBS (Dateline)

She married married notorious Islamic State recruiter Muhammad Zahab, who died in an air strike in 2018. Credit: ABC News
Meet the ISIS brides

One of the “ISIS brides” returning to Australia, Zahra Ahmad, is the widow of a notorious Islamic State recruiter who previously pleaded with Australians not to “judge” the women she says were trapped in the region as a result of “male influences”.

Two years ago, was interviewed in an SBS television documentary, insisting some of the women didn’t have a choice after male members of the family swore allegiance to Islamic State. She said she understood why people would be nervous about her return.

“I understand that, and I think I would have the same concern if I was back home,’’ she said.

“But what I would like to say is, ‘Don’t be so quick to judge’. Try and look at it from our perspective. We are also mothers. You know, we’re human beings.

“I didn’t make this bed. For me, that doesn’t apply.

“We are now forced to suffer for the decisions that other people – other male influences, you know – made on our behalf.

“Now they’re all gone, and we’re left to suffer with our kids.”

She later married the notorious Islamic State recruiter Muhammad Zahab, a former Australian maths teacher who died in an air strike in 2018.

The documentary featured video of her teaching her 12-year-old son, who has never attended school, basic maths.

Two years ago, she feared her male children being taken away from her.

“If they take them away from me, I might never see them again,’’ she said.

“I can’t have that happen to my kids.

“They are innocent. They haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t believe they should be punished for something they don’t even have anything to do with.”

Her son said he also feared being taken from the family because he was approaching his teenage years.

“I’m a big boy,” her 12-year-old son said. “I don’t want to get separated from my mum.”

She said her kids had been packed and ready to return home for years.

“The kids every day had their shoes ready on the door, had their clothes ready to get dressed to go, had their bags ready,’’ she said.

“The kids that have gone home, they’ve gone back to school, reintegrated back into society nicely.

“I just want my child to have the same opportunity to be healed. Going to school, going to the park, going to the zoo, these beautiful things that they should be allowed to do.”

Zeinab Ahmad: Picture: ABC News/Haybar Othman
Who are the ISIS brides returning to Australia

Kawsar Abbas

The 54-year-old is from Melbourne. She is the mother of Zahra and Zeinab.

She is the wife of Mohammed Ahmad, who ran a charity to support the people of Syria that the AFP believed was funnelling money to Islamic State.

The family first travelled to Syria in 2014 for a family wedding, they say this was before realising that their son, Omar, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

Zahra Ahmad

Zahra Ahmad married notorious Islamic State recruiter Muhammad Zahab, who died in an air strike in 2018.

She is the eldest daughter of Mohammed and Kawsar Abbas and is believed to have been Zahab’s second wife after he also married another Australian woman.

She had three sons.

Zeinab Ahmad

Zeinab, 31, has pleaded with Australia to repatriate the families.

“It’s not a place for a child to be, and every day.. it’s just getting harder,” she said.

“There’s a street (in the camp) — it’s called Australia Street. We live closely, we have a strong connection because we all have the same motive. We all want to get home.”

Janai Safar

A former health science student, Janai left Australia in 2015 to travel to Syria. She married an Islamic State fighter and had a child a year later.

She was quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2017 outlining her concerns that her children would be taken away from her.

“I didn’t train or kill anyone,” she said.

“I just sat at home, and they will put me in jail, they will take my child off me. Why? I’m a Muslim.”