Kawsar Ahmad was arrested at Melbourne Airport and has been charged with slavery offences. Photo / Australian Federal Police
Kawsar Ahmad was arrested at Melbourne Airport and has been charged with slavery offences. Photo / Australian Federal Police
A mother and daughter accused of keeping a woman as a slave in Syria will spend the next few weeks living alongside mushroom murderer Erin Patterson before seeking bail.
Kawsar Ahmad, 54, and Zeinab Ahmad, 31, were met by police at Melbourne’s airport on Thursday evening after leaving a refugeecamp for Isis-linked families in northern Syria, where they had been living for the past seven years.
Each was charged with slavery offences relating to a Yazidi woman, a minority group from northern Iraq, allegedly used as a slave in the family’s home in the Deir ez-Zur province of Syria in 2017 and 2018.
Kawsar Ahmad's daughter Zeinab Ahmad was also arrested. Photo / Australian Federal Police
The two women appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday morning via video link from the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre – a maximum security women’s prison in Melbourne where Patterson is serving a life sentence for the murders of three family members and attempted murder of a fourth with a poisoned beef wellington.
During their first court appearance last Friday, Kawsar Ahmad was represented in court by Bill Doogue, who acted as Patterson’s solicitor during her trial and filed paperwork for the convicted killer’s upcoming appeal.
The Ahmads were beamed into court from separate custody rooms at the remand centre and prison where they will be housed until they return to court next month for bail applications.
The Australian Federal Police allege the women travelled to Syria in 2014 and had been detained by Kurdish forces at the Al Roj camp since March 2019.
Convicted triple-murderer Erin Patterson is serving a life sentence in Australia. Photo / Getty Images
Erin Patterson has been housed at Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, a maximum security women’s prison in Melbourne. Photo / Supplied
It’s alleged Kawsar Ahmad was “complicit” in the purchase of a female slave for US$10,000 in about June 2017, with the two women alleged to have exercised control over the woman in conditions akin to slavery until about November 2018.
Kawsar Ahmad, also known as Kawsar Abbas, has been charged with four crimes against humanity offences of enslavement, possessing a slave, using a slave and engaging in slave trading.
Zeinab Ahmad, also known as Zeinab Ahmed, is charged with two offences of enslavement and using a slave.
Australian law prevents the media from identifying the woman the pair are alleged to have kept as a slave and, on Tuesday, Chief Magistrate Lisa Hannan granted an application listing a second woman as a “special witness”, which also bars her being identified.
Prosecutors told the court this woman was also an alleged victim of slavery-related offences, unrelated to the charges against Kawsar Ahmad and Zeinab Ahmad, but will give evidence “including interactions with the two accused”.
Justice Hannan said she was satisfied the designation was necessary because of the “distress or emotional trauma” that would arise from the nature of her evidence.
Zeinab Ahmad is expected to return to court for a bail application on June 5 and Kawsar Ahmad will return on June 16.
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