‘A hard sell’: the Aussie dad battling to get his ‘ISIS bride’ daughter home

We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.

Advertisement

This was published 2 years ago

‘A hard sell’: the Aussie dad battling to get his ‘ISIS bride’ daughter home

After Kamalle Dabboussy learnt his daughter had travelled to Syria with her Islamic State fighter husband, he was told to stay quiet. Now, after years of little action, he’s battling for her return – and that of other “ISIS brides”. 

By Tim Elliott

A photo of Mariam Dabboussy on her wedding day in 2013 with husband Kaled. The so-called ISIS bride has been stuck in the Al Hawl refugee camp in Syria for the past two years.

A photo of Mariam Dabboussy on her wedding day in 2013 with husband Kaled. The so-called ISIS bride has been stuck in the Al Hawl refugee camp in Syria for the past two years. Credit: Tim Bauer

Mariam Dabboussy always had a wild streak. The impish smile; the chaotic energy, the loud voice. She loved parties, colour and movement; the more people around the better. When she was born, in 1991, she didn’t so much arrive as “blow in”, like a storm. Indeed, her father, Kamalle, and his then wife nicknamed her Asikah Mariam – Arabic for Hurricane Mariam.

The family lived first in Berala in Sydney’s western suburbs, then Bankstown, before settling, in 1995, among the Lebanese community in Punchbowl, in the city’s south-west. Mariam and her younger sister went to Beverly Hills Girls High, but studying wasn’t a priority: Mariam preferred to socialise, go shopping, spend money. As a teenager, she wanted to sleep over at friends’ houses rather than come home. She craved independence, but escaping her father’s gaze wasn’t easy: as a prominent local social worker, Kamalle knew virtually everyone in the area; the shopkeepers, other families, even the teachers at Mariam’s school.

“There was a sense of security in that,” Kamalle tells me, sitting on the couch in a house he rents at Schofields, on the outskirts of Sydney. “But at the same time, it riled Mariam because she couldn’t get away with much without me knowing.”

A big, heavyset man of 54, Kamalle, who was born in Australia to Lebanese migrants, has thick dark hair, greying at the temples and swept back neatly. He is affable and articulate: an observant Muslim, he prays five times a day and doesn’t drink alcohol. But he is curious and broad-minded; as Mariam and her younger sister were growing up, he tried to teach them about Islam and give them a grounding in the faith, but he always reminded them to think for themselves. He told them: “You will have to make decisions based on your own search for the truth.”

When Kamalle and his wife divorced, in 2002, it left a vacuum in the family. (Kamalle’s ex-wife did not want to take part in this story.) Mariam, who lived with her father, didn’t drink, but she did dabble in recreational drugs, mainly pot. “Nothing really serious,” says Kamalle. “And we worked through it okay, with communication.”

A younger Mariam with her father Kamalle.

A younger Mariam with her father Kamalle.Credit: Courtesy of Kamalle Dabboussy

Mariam left school after year 10, in 2007. She studied childcare at Bankstown TAFE, and worked as a childcare assistant for a short time. Then, when she was 18, she came home and told Kamalle that she had met a boy called Kaled Zahab. Kaled was 20, and worked as an apprentice electrician in Bankstown. Mariam said they were serious about one another, and were thinking about getting engaged. “I told her that she was too young,” says Kamalle.

Advertisement

Nevertheless, Mariam convinced Kamalle to meet Kaled in a Gloria Jeans cafe in Bankstown Square. “He was a sweet guy,” says Kamalle. “A knockabout kid but very polite, and he said all the right things.”

Mariam kept asking for Kamalle’s approval to marry; finally, on the fifth time, he said yes. The wedding, in 2013, was a grand affair, with 200 people at Sydney’s Botanic Gardens: Mariam’s Big Fat Lebanese Wedding, as the family called it. One of the guests of honour was Kaled’s older brother, Muhammad Zahab. Muhammad, who was 27 at the time, was charismatic and bright: he had a master’s degree in education, and had taught maths at Al Noori Muslim School, in Greenacre. He was also a committed Muslim, and had just returned from Syria, where he had apparently been providing humanitarian aid to those affected by the country’s civil war. It was regarded as a noble cause, and Muhammad was much respected.

After the wedding, Mariam and Kaled moved into a granny flat attached to his parents’ house in Condell Park, in Sydney’s south-west. The Zahabs were Sunni Muslims, deeply religious and much more conservative than Kamalle. All the Zahab women wore the hijab, the traditional Muslim head covering. Hicham and Aminah, Kaled’s parents, even refused to borrow money, abiding by the Islamic prohibition on usury. (When they couldn’t afford a new car, Kamalle lent them money, interest-free.)

Despite Kamalle’s best efforts, religion had never been a part of Mariam’s life. Now, things began changing. Within months, Mariam began wearing the hijab. She took lessons to improve her Arabic; Kamalle later found out that the teacher urged Mariam to be stricter in her faith, and criticised Kamalle for being too permissive. Before long, Mariam had a baby girl, Aisha, but she gradually began pulling away from her father. “She contacted me less and less,” he says. “It was upsetting, but I told myself that she and Kaled needed their own space.”

Then, in early 2015, Mariam and Kaled decided to go travelling with Aisha. Much to Kamalle’s delight, they invited him along. The four of them made their way to Malaysia, then to Dubai, where they went shopping, visited the Burj Khalifa tower, and took a desert safari tour, where Kamalle and Kaled bonded like young boys.

Two men turned up at his door. They were Australian government security agents. “Your daughter is in Syria,” they said.

Advertisement

Kamalle then returned home, leaving Mariam, Kaled and Aisha in Dubai. The plan was for them to continue on to Lebanon, where they would be joined by Kaled’s parents. But a couple of weeks later, Kamalle received a brief, puzzling text message from Mariam saying they were in Turkey. Kamalle called her and asked why. Mariam told him they were staying in the countryside, on a property owned by a friend of Muhammad Zahab. Kaled’s parents were there, too, and his younger brother, 11-year-old Yusuf. The property was near Gaziantep, close to the border with Syria. Uneasy, Kamalle asked to speak to Kaled, but he refused to come to the phone.

For the next three weeks there was no news. Kamalle began to worry. He called Mariam and told her he was flying to Turkey, but she warned him not to come. Then, a few days later, in July of 2015, two men turned up at his door. They were Australian government security agents. “Your daughter is in Syria,” they said. It would be four years before Kamalle saw Mariam again.

Kaled, Mariam and daughter Aisha in 2014. The following year, Kaled would be killed in Syria.

Kaled, Mariam and daughter Aisha in 2014. The following year, Kaled would be killed in Syria.Credit: Courtesy of Kamalle Dabboussy

Of the myriad tragedies born out of the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, one of the most disastrous was the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Guided primarily by a Jordanian jihadist named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, ISIS began as an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Through its various iterations, the group extended its ambitions, eventually coming to worldwide prominence when it captured Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in June 2014. Shortly afterward, ISIS’s then leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, proclaimed a caliphate, or Islamic state, issuing a religious and legal edict for Muslims worldwide to join it. Tens of thousands of jihadis did just that.

One of them was Muhammad Zahab. It’s now thought that Muhammad had been a senior member of ISIS since at least 2013. Travelling back and forth between Syria and Australia under the guise of his aid work, Muhammad recruited up to a dozen of his family members, including his wife, his sister and her husband, his parents, Hicham and Aminah, and Kaled.

The government officials who visited Kamalle, in July 2015, didn’t mention ISIS by name. But according to Kamalle, they did say that Mariam had been
“coerced over the border”. They also warned Kamalle not to talk to anyone about what had happened. He wasn’t to go to the media or contact the families of other Australians who had gone to Syria. In a book he has written about his experience, called A Father’s Plea, Kamalle says that the officials intimated that the other families could not be trusted, and that talking with them could jeopardise Mariam’s return. (The federal government would not comment on Mariam’s case.)

Kamalle did as he was told. For the next two months he kept to himself. He tried to concentrate on his work at Liverpool’s Migrant Resource Centre (MRC), where he was CEO. Then, in early September, 2015, he got a text from an unknown number: “Dad, it’s me.” He called back and heard Mariam’s voice. She said she was being held by ISIS – she wouldn’t say where – and that she was heavily pregnant with a second child to Kaled. But she could only talk briefly; ISIS were monitoring her calls. (Michael Krona, a specialist in ISIS’s media strategy at Sweden’s Malmo University, tells me all communications from ISIS-held territory were heavily surveilled.)

Advertisement

For the next year, Kamalle was able to communicate with Mariam, off and on, but only in brief texts and phone calls. He discovered that Kaled had been killed in an air strike on an ISIS training camp just three months after arriving in Syria, and that Mariam had since been married to another ISIS fighter, named Muhammad.

Kamalle says he began approaching the Australian government for help in mid-2016, but that he was largely ignored. When he did get a response, he was told that the government was “monitoring the situation”. Another time he received a letter telling him that Mariam’s passport had been cancelled. Desperate, he formulated, then abandoned, a plan to extract Mariam using people smugglers.

Then, in February, 2017, Mariam told Kamalle that she had a plan to escape. For months afterwards there was no news. Kamalle told himself that he would hear from Mariam soon, but as time dragged on with no contact he became increasingly despondent. He didn’t know where she was or even if she was alive. “It was torturous,” Kamalle says. “Just a nightmare.”

Kamalle Dabboussy still holds out hope he can bring his daughter home.

Kamalle Dabboussy still holds out hope he can bring his daughter home. Credit: Tim Bauer

He became depressed, and started seeing a counsellor. “He was beyond distraught,” says a close colleague of Kamalle who worked with him at the MRC.

“I would know that his mind was somewhere in Syria. He would sometimes jump at his phone too quickly. He was always on edge, trying to get whatever skerrick of information he could.” As the months became a year, friends and family urged Kamalle to accept that Mariam and her children were probably dead. One day, he suffered a breakdown at work. Inevitably, he asked himself whether Mariam could have gone to Syria willingly; whether she planned to join ISIS all along. If so, as he writes in his book, “I would have felt utterly forsaken.”

Then, in July, 2018, he was trudging upstairs to his bedroom when he got a text. “Dad, can you talk? Urgent.” It was Mariam. He immediately called back. “To hear her voice was a miracle,” says Kamalle, tearing up. “My legs gave way. I just collapsed.” He asked a barrage of questions – “Where are you?” “What are you doing?” “Are you okay?” – but his adrenalin was such that he recalls little of the conversation. “I don’t even remember getting into bed that night.” The next morning he called his ex-wife to tell her, and she said, “I know. You called me last night.”

Advertisement

More calls and texts followed. Mariam told Kamalle that she’d had a baby girl, in late 2017, to her second husband, Muhammad, but that he had died just days later when their house was bombed, and that she had since been married for a third time.

By late 2018, the tide was turning against ISIS. Mariam and her children were forced to move to the group’s last holdout, the town of Baghuz, on the border of Syria and Iraq. In February, 2019, as fighting raged around them, Mariam and her three children managed to escape, making their way to a refugee camp at Al-Hol, 200 kilometres north of Baghuz, in an area of north-east Syria run by the Kurds. There they found a group of other Australians. There were no bombs in Al-Hol and no shooting, but it was a desperate place, its 60,000 inhabitants engaged in a day-to-day struggle for survival, with scant food and little medical care.

Loading

By March 2019, the Australian government had ascertained that there were 20 Australian women in Al-Hol, and 47 children. (Included among the women are Kaled’s mother Aminah, his sister Sumaya and cousin Nesrine. It’s thought that most of the women’s husbands are dead; those who survived, including Hicham and Yusuf, were jailed by the Kurds in an undisclosed location somewhere in north-east Syria, where they remain.)

Now that the women and children were in the relative safety of Kurdish territory, Kamalle assumed they would be repatriated. But he was wrong. While acknowledging that the children in Al-Hol were blameless, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Sky News in October 2019 that he wouldn’t put “one Australian at risk” to get them out. As then Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton put it, the women had “made a decision to take their children into a theatre of war. They’ve been fighting in the name of an evil organisation, and there are consequences.”

When it became clear the government had no intention of stepping in, Kamalle defied the advice he had been given for years by the authorities and began tracking down the families of the other Australians who had been in Syria. He eventually found 55 people – sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers – all desperate to get their loved ones back. “Law enforcement had insinuated that these people were radicals and not to be trusted,” Kamalle tells me. “But when I met them they were all just lovely people who were suffering as I was.”

Kamalle has for the past two years been advocating on behalf of the group, or “this strange club of ours,” as he calls it, talking to MPs and aid groups, Muslim organisations, journalists and lawyers. Asking the government to help free a group of “ISIS brides” was “a hard sell” he says, and has taken a “huge personal toll”. He has lost friends, been abused and received death threats. He used to be able to travel freely: now he is routinely stopped and questioned at airports.

Advertisement

“Kamalle’s mental and physical wellbeing has suffered,” says Mat Tinkler, deputy CEO of Save the Children, which has supported Kamalle for the past two years, providing media and policy advice and leveraging its connections in Canberra. “There are days when I can tell he is just hanging on.”

Tinkler says the government has clear legal and humanitarian obligations to take responsibility for its own citizens. “The vast bulk of them are children,” he says. “They are innocent in anyone’s eyes.” The government has so far refused, however, claiming that it would be too dangerous to repatriate them. Tinkler says this is not credible. “The US has extended an offer to use its military assets to extract the women. The Kurds, Save the Children, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross have also offered to help.”

Many other countries have safely returned their nationals, including the US, France, Belgium and Russia. (Bringing the children home without their mothers is not an option, according to Tinkler: “The overwhelming evidence is that children do worse when separated from their parents. It’s in the best interests of the children that they be brought home with their mothers as soon as possible.” )

The government has also said that the women could represent a security risk back here in Australia. But the Australian National University’s Dr Clarke Jones, an expert in working with marginalised Muslim communities, says the risks are “overstated”, and could be addressed by Australia’s myriad support and intervention services. In any case, the women have agreed to co-operate with law enforcement should they be repatriated, and be subject to voluntary control orders, which would give the government extraordinary powers to monitor their movements.

“If learned behaviour is tied up in the context of how they were treated by the Australian Government, then this could lead to radicalisation.”

According to Jones, the real security risk is having them remain in the camp. “The kids are in a dangerous environment,” he says. “If exposed to violence and harsh treatment, there is a good chance that this exposure could lead to learned behaviour. If this learned behaviour is tied up in the context of how they were treated by the Australian Government, then this could lead to radicalisation, not to mention a raft of other dangerous behaviours.”

It’s been suggested that the government left the women there because until recently it didn’t have enough to charge them. But this may have changed. In early 2020, the Australian Federal Police announced that it had obtained 42 arrest warrants for Australians who had travelled to Syria “for alleged criminal offences against Australian law”. Kamalle doesn’t know if there is a warrant for Mariam. “But if there is, then we will deal with it,” he says. “The legal advice is that it’s better dealing with a live client than commiserating a dead one.”

A Father’s Plea is a moving story, a powerful account of a father’s love for his daughter and the lengths he will go to rescue her. It’s impossible not to feel for Kamalle, whose anguish is evident on almost every page. But questions have inevitably been raised about Mariam’s story, and by extension, those of the other “ISIS brides”.

Loading

In the book, to be released next week, Kamalle maintains that Mariam had no intention of joining ISIS, and that she was tricked into going into Syria by her husband, Kaled. (Mariam, who was transferred last year from Al-Hol to Roj, another refugee camp, could not be reached for this story.) Kamalle claims that Kaled led Mariam and their 18-month-old child, Aisha, to the border of Turkey and Syria on the pretext of rescuing his sister, Sumaya, who had been held by ISIS since 2014.

Kaled told Mariam that Sumaya was being brought to the border by people smugglers; once she was in Turkish territory, Kaled would whisk her to safety. Kaled had also brought along his father Hicham, who was then 58, his mother Aminah, and his little brother, Yusuf, who was 11. Apparently they were all standing at the border when gunshots rang out. The group fled. In the melee, they ran over the border into Syria, and into the arms of ISIS.

There are several things about this story that are strange. It’s not clear why Mariam would bring her 18-month-old daughter on such a risky venture. It’s equally unclear why Kaled’s parents and younger brother were there. What help could a 58-year-old man and a 11-year-old boy be in rescuing Sumaya? When I described this scenario to five of the world’s foremost experts on ISIS, all of them said it sounded highly implausible. Casting further doubt on the story is a 2019 interview that Kurdish media conducted with Hicham in jail. When asked how he got into Syria from Turkey, Hicham didn’t mention any gunfight: he simply walked across the border.

By early 2015, there were multiple signs that something was amiss with the Zahabs. Muhammad was in Syria with ISIS, as was Sumaya and their cousin Nesrine Zahab, who had gone in 2014. Another cousin, Haisem Zahab, was at the same time researching rocket technology for ISIS on his property at Young, in rural NSW. (Haisem was arrested in February 2017 and charged with supporting a terrorist organisation. In 2019, he was sentenced to six years and nine months in jail.) In the weeks before they went travelling in March, 2015, Kaled and Mariam sold most of their belongings. That same month, Hicham and Aminah sold their home in Condell Park. (In 2016, the Australian Federal Police froze $500,000 from the sale, believing it was intended to finance ISIS; some months later, Kuwait charged Hicham with supporting and financing terrorism. He is still being held by the Kurds, in north-east Syria.)

Is it possible that Mariam, who had been living with the Zahabs for two years, didn’t suspect anything? It is true that conservative Arab households can be strictly segregated; a submissive wife may not be privy to men’s affairs. But Mariam was not submissive. As Kamalle is at pains to point out, she was feisty and strong-willed, and more than Kaled’s equal.

By the time Kaled and Mariam went into Syria, no one could have been in any doubt about what ISIS stood for.

Kamalle tells me that Mariam called her mother from Turkey, shortly before crossing into Syria, to organise a flight back to Australia. “Mariam wanted to come back, alone, and leave Kaled in Turkey,” he says. But this is impossible to check, because Mariam’s mother would not talk to me. In any case, Mariam didn’t buy the ticket.

Ascertaining levels of complicity is difficult. It may have been that Kaled threatened to take their young daughter Aisha over the border with him, and that Mariam was coerced this way. It could have been that Kaled, under the sway of his older brother, was himself unsure about his intentions; that he was vacillating up until the last moment. It’s not uncommon to hear former ISIS members claim they joined with good intentions, that they didn’t know what they were getting into.

That may have been true for the earliest recruits, the most naive of whom may plausibly have believed they were establishing an Islamic utopia. But by the time Kaled and Mariam went into Syria, no one could have been in any doubt about what ISIS stood for. As early as 2014, the mainstream media was awash in reports of ISIS atrocities: public executions, sexual slavery, beheadings of foreign journalists, the slaughter of the Yazidis near Iraq’s Mount Sinjar. “It really annoys me when people say, ‘It wasn’t what I was expecting,’ ” says Haroro Ingram, a researcher into extremism at George Washington University in the US. “Well, what the hell were you expecting?”

Kamalle says that the security agents who came to his door in 2015 told him that Mariam had been “coerced”. But how did they know, I ask? “Because they said they had intercepted a lot of messages,” Kamalle says. Operation Marksburg, an AFP counter-terrorism investigation into the Zahab family, was also garnering information. “The police told me that Kaled was under a lot of pressure from Muhammad to bring his whole family over, including Mariam.”

Kamalle with Mariam and her daughters Aisha, left, and Fatema, during his brief visit to the Al-Hol refugee camp in Syria in 2019.

Kamalle with Mariam and her daughters Aisha, left, and Fatema, during his brief visit to the Al-Hol refugee camp in Syria in 2019.Credit: Courtesy of Kamalle Dabboussy

Kamalle is a large, gentle man with enormous reserves of good faith and forbearance. Yet even he has had doubts about his daughter. “There were many times over the years where I said to myself, ‘Am I looking at this through rose-tinted glasses?’ ” he tells me. At one stage, even his own family suggested Mariam was more culpable than she seemed. “They questioned whether I knew my daughter as well as I thought.” (None of Kamalle’s family would talk to me.) The question of whether Mariam willingly joined ISIS is not academic: distancing herself from the group will help her, should she be charged with terrorism offences.

The stakes are also high for Kamalle. He tells me he would be “devastated” if he found out Mariam had planned to join the group all along. “But as a father, I just know she didn’t.” In 2019, Kamalle managed to get into Al-Hol with a crew from the ABC TV program Four Corners. Getting access was difficult, and the visit was brief: Kamalle had only an hour or so with Mariam over the course of three days. “I asked her about her health, how she was managing to get along. She introduced me to the kids.” Kamalle also asked her about whether she had come to Syria to join ISIS. “I asked her directly,” he says. “I looked her in the eye, as father and daughter, and she said she didn’t. And I believe her.”

Propped up on the sideboard in Kamalle’s living room is a photo of Mariam and Kaled at their wedding. They are sitting side by side on a patch of iridescent green grass at Sydney’s Botanic Gardens, smiling with what appears to be huge optimism. I ask if Kamalle is still angry with Kaled. “Kaled is the source of my long pain and anguish, and obviously I’m angry at the decision he made. But I can’t paint him as an evil character. He fell into a trap, and at the end of the day, he paid the ultimate price. The focus now is on getting my daughter and my grandchildren home.”

Kamalle tries to maintain contact with Mariam, but this is easier said that done. Roj has 3000 people sharing one phone.

Kamalle is continuing his advocacy work, making personal representations to policy makers and writing letters to politicians. There are some MPs he talks to fairly regularly: federal Labor Senator Kristina Keneally, federal Labor MP Peter Khalil and Greens Senator Janet Rice. Kamalle says he is considering suing the Australian Government, claiming it has failed in its duty of care to the women and children in Roj, who despite the nature of their activities with ISIS remain Australian citizens.

“Hundreds of children die in the refugee camps every year,” Kamalle says. “Should an Australian child die over there, the government will have blood on its hands.”

It’s unclear if the government has any plans to repatriate Mariam and the others. A spokesperson from the Department of Home Affairs tells me in an email that “the Australian Government is aware of the deeply concerning situation in north-east Syria and is monitoring it closely”, adding that “Australia funds humanitarian partners who work to provide access
to healthcare and protection to the vulnerable in north-east Syria”.

Kamalle tries to maintain contact with Mariam, but this is easier said that done. Roj has 3000 people sharing one phone. Kamalle must record a message, which is then sent out to the entire camp. There is no guarantee that Mariam will receive it: sometimes she doesn’t reply for weeks. Kamalle is also working full-time, and caring for his 88-year-old father, who has dementia. As a result, he has very little of what most people would consider a normal life, including the prospect of having a partner.

Loading

“There have been two attempted romantic relationships [since his separation], but they haven’t survived the distance,” he says. “A relationship requires a lot of energy and time, particularly at the start, and that’s just not what I’m able to give at the moment.”

He sees his youngest daughter, who is 22 and lives close by, but he still gets lonely. “It’s very difficult,” he tells me. “At the moment I’m feeling it more than ever before, that loneliness.” Recently he bought a house in Parklea, in north-west Sydney, which he is in the process of renovating.

“It’s a bigger place, with more living space, for when Mariam and the three kids turn up.” Mariam turned 30 earlier this year; her children are now seven, four and three. The third child is by Muhammad, an ISIS fighter who is now dead and whom Kamalle never met.

“We have very little information about him,” Kamalle says. “I don’t know his story, and haven’t even seen a photo of him. But his presence will remain in our lives by virtue of being the father to my granddaughter, and it’s her interests that trumps everything else.”

Kamalle talks as if it’s a fait accompli that they will return, perhaps even this year. There have been promising signs. In May, Denmark, Canada and Sweden sent delegations to the camps, which is usually a precursor to repatriation. Once they move, it’s hoped Australia will follow. In the meantime, Kamalle keeps busy; he works, cares for his dad, renovates. And he prays. “I pray for Mariam and the kids. I pray that God will soften the hearts of those who have hard ones.” And he prays for patience. “We need to do all that we can, and the result is not always apparent.”

* Shortly after this story went to press, news emerged that former Melbourne woman and ISIS bride, Zehra Duman, had been released, in November last year, from jail in Turkey, where she was serving a six year and 10 month term for being a member of a terrorist group. Duman, who is 26, travelled to Syria in 2014 to join ISIS. When ISIS fell in 2019, she and her two young children ended up in the al-Hol refugee camp. They then fled to Turkey, where she was arrested and put on trial. (Duman was a dual Turkish/Australian citizen, but had her Australian citizenship stripped in 2019.) Duman was reportedly released because she was the only one capable of caring for her children. It’s thought she and her children are now living in an unknown location in Turkey. “Zehra Duman put herself and her kids in increased danger to get out of Syria, something the Australian authorities said not to do,” said Kamalle Dabboussy. “Meanwhile, my daughter and three grandchildren languish in deplorable conditions waiting for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to value their lives and get them to safety.”

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.

The best of Good Weekend delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Sign up here.

Most Viewed in National

Loading