Refugee child believed to be ISIS doctor’s son

INVESTIGATIONS are under way after a little boy was discovered in Syria who is potentially the son of notorious Australian ISIS doctor Tareq Kamleh.

The child, named Youssef, was found living with a DutchSomalian woman and another little boy in the al-Roj refugee camp in northern Syria.

The woman told American and Kurdish security officials she was the fourth wife of Kamleh (pictured) and was raising the little boy alongside her own child.

She and the children were taken to the Kurdish-governed area of Syria after ISIS’s last redoubt, Baghouz, fell in March 2019.

A doctor who worked in Adelaide and Mackay, Kamleh travelled to Syria in 2015 and worked as a doctor and a propagandist for ISIS.

The blond-haired surfer, who had a reputation as a womaniser and a party boy before he joined the caliphate, starred in ISIS videos which showed him treating babies in Syrian hospitals, posing with guns.

His Perth-based family was devastated when he adopted ISIS ideology and travelled to Syria, where he was believed to be the only Australian who joined the caliphate. He is believed to have been killed in Syria in 2017 or 2018.

If Youssef is his biological child, he is an Australian orphan and would therefore be eligible to be repatriated to Australia. Officials, however, may not want to separate him from the woman who has been caring for him for several years and her child.

The Department of Home Affairs is aware of the discovery of the child, who was not previously known among the cohort of more than 40 Australian children and 20 women who are being detained in secure camps for ISIS fighter families in northeastern Syria.

The department would not comment due to “privacy considerations’’.

Family advocate Kamalle Dabboussy said it was important to determine the child’s background and urged the Australian government to facilitate DNA testing of Youssef and Kamleh’s Australian family.

“There does appear to be enough evidence to warrant urgent DNA testing to further clarify Youssef’s situation,’’ he said.

It is thought Kamleh married four women during his time in Syria, starting with a Syrian woman, who disappeared. His second wife appears to have been a European woman of North African descent, who was killed. She is potentially Youssef’s mother.