Keenan says jihadis’ children deserve chance

THEY may be photographed holdings guns and bomb vests and carrying human heads but Australian children of terrorists should be dealt with as abuse victims and deserved a chance to reform, Justice Minister Michael Keenan said.

As more disturbing video images of the children of Australian jihadist Khaled Sharrouf posing in a suicide vest and being asked how to murder non-Muslim Australians emerge, Mr Keenan said it was the parents who were guilty and not necessarily their kids.

“There are cases where families have been taken by their father and mother into war zones, as astonishing at that is that a parent would do that to a child, we will seek to prosecute the parents for what they have done,” he said.

“But for the families themselves when you are dealing with young children, we need to put them into the social services system run by the states to ensure their welfare is looked after.”

He said it was a “terrible generalisation” to suggest these children were beyond reform.

“In no circumstances are we going to accept anyone who poses a security risk to Australia but a seven-year-old we have to work with them to try and bring them back to the community.

“They’ve been exposed to terrible experiences but they are blameless in that because they are seven years old and have had to deal with what their parents have done,” he said.

Mr Keenan, who is in the Middle East with Defence Minister Marise Payne for high-level counter-terrorism discussions, said he couldn’t understand why some people were against trying to help the children of jihadists.