A mother and daughter accused of being ISIS brides abandoned their bid for bail on Monday and will remain in jail facing charges of crimes against humanity and slavery.
Grandmother Kawsar Abbas, 53, and her daughter Zeinab Ahmad, 31, were expected to apply for bail in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court after they were remanded in custody at a hearing on Friday.
The pair will now remain behind bars until next month when they are expected to make a fresh bid for freedom.
Abbas is being represented by Melbourne barrister Peter Morrissey, SC, who represented Bali 9 members Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran during their appeals in Indonesia.
Ahmad’s bid for freedom is being handled by Grace Morgan, who is expected to run the first bail application.
The pair were among a group of women and children who returned to Australia amid chaotic airport scenes on Thursday after years of living in a Syrian refugee camp.
Detectives allege Abbas travelled to the region with her husband and children in 2014.
They allege she was complicit in buying a female slave for US$10,000, and knowingly kept the woman in her home.
Kawsar Abbas and Zeinab Ahmad will apply for bail on slavery charges
The so-called ‘ISIS brides’ flew into Melbourne last week in chaotic scenes
She has been charged with enslavement, possessing a slave, using a slave and slave trading. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in jail if convicted.
Charge sheets released by the court allege the 53-year-old enslaved, possessed and used the slave in Mayadin, Hajin, Gharanji, Bahra, Abu Hamam, Walaa and other places in the Deir ez-Zor province of Syria between June 2017 and November 2018.
It is alleged Ahmad had also knowingly kept a female slave in her Syrian home, with police charging her with enslavement and using a slave over the same period.
The document stated the pair’s conduct was ‘committed intentionally or knowingly as part of a widespread or systemic attack directed against a civilian population’.
Police said the pair were detained by Kurdish forces in 2019 and held with other family members in the Al Roj Internally Displaced Persons camp.
They are among three returnees charged following an almost decade-long investigation, which began after the women travelled to the Middle East with their partners, who allegedly intended to fight for Islamic State.
A third woman, 32-year-old Janai Safar, who flew into Sydney, was arrested and charged with entering a prohibited area and being a member of a terrorist organisation.
She was denied bail due to the seriousness of the charges and will return before Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court in July.
A fourth woman, Zeinab’s sister, Zahra Ahmad, 33, returned with the group but was released without charge
The first bail application has been scheduled for June 16 before Chief Magistrate Lisa Hannan.
