Updated September 2, 2026 — 5:36pm,first published 5:33pm
A number of Australians could face the death penalty after the government of Iraq announced it was moving to prosecute former participants in Islamic State for terror offences.
Thirteen Australian men – including one who was taken to Syria by his family as a boy – are in Iraq’s Al-Karkh Central Prison after surviving the fall of Islamic State in 2019, then being transferred earlier this year from prisons in Syria.
Six of the men are from Sydney, four from Melbourne and one each from Perth and Adelaide. Among them is a young man, Yusuf Zahab, who was a 12-year-old boy when his parents took him to Syria, and 15 when Islamic State fell and he became a prisoner. He has come to adulthood behind bars and is now 22.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has previously said the government would give “absolutely none” of the men any assistance to return home if they were freed by Iraqi authorities, and another minister, Clare O’Neil has said one of the detainees, Tareq “Dr Jihad” Kamleh, could “rot in jail”.
