Islamic State-linked Australian women charged with keeping slave in Syria

The mother and daughter, accused of ‘crimes against humanity’, were arrested in Melbourne after travelling from a Syrian detention camp

Two Australian women “kept a female slave” after travelling to Syria in 2014 to support Islamic State, police said on Friday after the pair were charged in Melbourne.

The women returned to Australia on Thursday evening for the first time in almost a decade, travelling from a Syrian detention camp where they were stranded after the group’s collapse.

They were immediately arrested after their Qatar Airways flight landed at Melbourne International Airport.

Police accused the women – a mother and daughter aged 53 and 31 – of “crimes against humanity” while living under Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate.

The 53-year-old woman was “complicit in the purchase of a female slave for US$10,000”, the Australian Federal Police said.

The 31-year-old woman had “knowingly kept a female slave in the home”.