A police van carries away one of the Australian women linked to alleged Islamic State jihadists from Mascot Police Station in Sydney on May 7, 2026, following her arrest on arrival at Sydney airport and subsequent interrogation. Photo / Getty Images
Police footage has emerged of the moment Isis bride Janai Safar, 32, was arrested and taken into custody at Sydney Airport leaving her 9-year-old son behind with family.
The former nursing student left Australia in her early 20s.
Her arrest followed chaotic scenes in Melbourne, where two members of her extended family were arrested and are expected to be charged with crimes against humanity connected with allegations the family kept slaves.
Janai Safar is expected to face Downing Centre Local Court today.
She was charged with multiple offences including being a member of a terrorist organisation.
The offences carry a maximum penalty of up to 10 years’ imprisonment.
It will be alleged the woman travelled to Syria in 2015 to join her husband, who had previously left Australia and joined ISIS.
AFP Assistant Commissioner Counter Terrorism Stephen Nutt said police had been investigating the family for a decade.
“Australian JCTTs methodically investigated all Australians who travelled to declared conflict areas and will ensure those who are alleged to have committed a criminal offence are put before the courts.
“JCTTs include some of the most experienced national security investigators and analysts in our country.
“This remains an active investigation into very serious allegations.”
The NSW JCTT comprises the AFP, NSW Police Force, ASIO and the NSW Crime Commission.
Melbourne grandmother Kawsar Abbas and her 31-year-old daughter are expected to be charged with “crimes against humanity”.
The so-called ISIS brides, who returned from the Middle East on Thursday night after spending over a decade in the region, were arrested at Melbourne International Airport.
A fourth woman, another daughter of Abbas who was not charged with any offences, was met with chaotic scenes upon her exit from Melbourne’s Terminal 2.
A massive group of supporters had been waiting to escort the woman and the eight children she had been travelling with, through the throng of reporters.
Dressed mostly in black, with some wearing hoodies and face masks, the burly entourage pushed the party past the large media contingent and into a waiting minibus.
The smaller children in the group were carried out.
Earlier, some of the men said they would be providing “security” and escorting the repatriated group out.
The Australian Federal Police have confirmed three women have now been arrested by Joint Counter Terrorism Teams (JCTT) under Operation Kurrajong.
“It is expected a 53-year-old woman will be charged tonight or tomorrow with the following four Commonwealth offences, crimes against humanity; enslavement, crimes against humanity; possess a slave, crimes against humanity; use a slave, crimes against humanity; engage in slave trading,” Nutt said earlier on Thursday.
“These offences each carry a maximum penalty of 25 years imprisonment.
“A 31-year-old woman will also expect to be charged tonight or tomorrow with the following two Commonwealth offences: crimes against humanity and enslavement. Crimes against humanity use a slave. Both offences carry a maximum penalty of 25 years’ imprisonment.”
The two women will appear before a Victorian court once they have been charged.
While the AFP did not name any of the women, he confirmed expected charges in relation to Janai Safar, the only ISIS bride to land at Sydney airport. She was officially charged late on Thursday night.
“At Sydney International Airport, the New South Wales joint counter-terrorism team arrested a 32-year-old woman who is expected to be charged tonight or tomorrow with the following two Commonwealth offences, entering or remaining in a declared area and being a member of a terrorist organisation,” he said earlier.
“Both offences carry a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment.
“The woman will appear before a New South Wales court once she is charged.”
The AFP said operational planning for these matters started in 2015.
Safar,
who once told the media she never wanted to return to Australia, has a 9-year-old son born after her relationship with an Isis fighter.
In a 2019 interview, Safar told journalists that she did not regret travelling to the region.
“It was my decision to come here to go away from where women are naked on the street. I don’t want my son to be raised around that,” she said in 2019.
“I didn’t train or kill anyone. I just sat at home, and they will put me in jail, they will take my child off me. Why? I’m a Muslim.
“I saw everything [the coalition forces did], and no one gets punished for that. They say I’m not supposed to be in Syria, but they [the Australians] come to Syria with planes.”
Speaking on ABC TV earlier on Thursday, Education Minister Jason Clare confirmed that the nine children who are returning will be provided access to special programmes 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 programmes 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.”
Speaking on Sky News, opposition home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam said the Albanese Government never should have let the women and children back into Australia.
“They were born into or raised among fundamentalist Islamist extremists, so something’s going to have rubbed off on these kids, and therefore they are a risk to our society.
“I’m very worried about what we are bringing back into this country. They’re here. They’re our problem as a country, we’re going to have to pay for them and we’re going to have to be worried.”
Kawsar Abbas, the mother of two Australian Isis brides who arrived back in Melbourne on Thursday night previously described her son as a “soldier of Allah” in social media posts.
Abbas’ 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.”
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.
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, she 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 airstrike 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.
“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.”
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 airstrike 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, Safar 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.
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