Terror kids in limbo

Fate of Sharrouf family in Syria comes ‘one step at a time’: PM

PRIME Minister Scott Morrison says he is considering the return of terrorist Khaled Sharrouf’s children one step at a time but national security is his number one priority.

Sharrouf’s three children are at a refugee camp in Syria and have just been reunited with their grandmother Karen Nettleton, who has been negotiating with officials to bring the youngsters home.

Mr Morrison says the Government has been working with the Red Cross and is taking each case of surviving children of Islamic State fighters on their merits.

“Security always comes first but I’m very mindful we’re dealing with children here,” he said yesterday. “I’m not getting drawn into any final decisions here, we take this process one step at a time.”

The children – Zaynab, 17, Hoda, 16, and Humzeh, 8 – were taken to Syria by their parents, who have since died.

Zaynab now has two toddler daughters and is heavily pregnant. Sharrouf was killed in an air strike in September 2017, along with his two older sons, Abdullah, 12, and Zarqawi, 11.

The children’s mother, Mrs Nettleton’s daughter Tara, died in 2015.

Mrs Nettleton had not seen her grandchildren since 2014 but reunited with them at the al-Hawl camp in northern Syria, where those fleeing Islamic State’s last enclave at Baghouz ended up. She has been negotiating with Australian and Kurdish officials to get the children home but says it has been frustrating.

“We don’t get a yes or no answer. All they’ve said is that once we get to Turkey, they’ll give us all the help that they can, our medical, dental, physio, anything that we need,” Mrs Nettleton told ABC’s Four Corners program.

“We weren’t the ones that chose to come here in the first place,” Zaynab said.

“I mean we were brought here by our parents. And now that our parents are gone, we want to live.”