(AFP) Australia faces a lawsuit aimed at forcing the government to repatriate Islamic State fighters’ wives and children from a Syrian refugee camp, lawyers for their families told AFP Thursday.
The threat of a lawsuit comes the same day as parliament passed legislation to prevent Australian citizens who have fought for the Islamic State from returning home for up to two years under so-called “temporary exclusion orders.”
Lawyers for the Australia-based families of nearly 30 women and children currently held in Syria’s Al-Hawl camp said the firm was preparing to refer their case to the Federal Court in coming days.
Sarah Condon, of the Melbourne law firm Stary Norton Halphen, said the government had a legal obligation to protect Australian civilians abroad and called for a timeframe for the extraction of the families living in conditions she described as “increasingly volatile and dangerous.”
