PM says no mercy for Australians joining militant groups abroad

PanARMENIAN.Net - Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said he will not show mercy to Australians who join militant groups abroad but then regret it and try to go home. He was responding to reports that three Australians with Islamist groups in Syria were in talks about coming home, BBC News reports.

The lawyer for one man said his client was disillusioned with jihad and could help dissuade others from joining up. But Abbott warned anyone hoping to return that "you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted and jailed".

It is illegal for Australian citizens to support armed groups overseas, but the government estimates around 90 Australians are fighting with militant groups in the Middle East.

"A crime is a crime is a crime," Abbott told reporters on Tuesday, May 19. "If you go abroad to break Australian law, if you go abroad to kill innocent people in the name of misguided fundamental extremism, if you go abroad to be an Islamist killer, well, we are hardly going to welcome you back into this country."

Australia media report that the three men seeking to go home had joined the Islamic State group which holds large areas of Iraq and Syria.

Fairfax Media reports that negotiations with at least two of the men began several months ago. But there are concerns for the safety of foreign affairs officials who would facilitate any return.

Lawyer Rob Stary, a lawyer for one of the men, said his client worked as a medic in areas of Syria controlled by both the Islamist Group al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army.

He told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that the unnamed Victorian man had had his passport cancelled after he travelled to the Middle East.

Stary said discussions with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) over his client's possible return has stalled.

"I don't expect our client to return in the current context," Stary said on ABC radio. "He would be vulnerable to being charged. I expect he would be charged."

He told another radio station, 3AW, that if his client was "capable of reclamation" then he should be brought back to be questioned, but that "the shutters have been put up" by the police.

The radicalization and recruitment of adults and children by Islamist terror groups is a mounting challenge for authorities in Australia, the BBC notes. In March it was reported that counter-terror units at Australian airports conducted 76,000 "real-time" stops of potentially suspicious travelers between August 2014 and February this year.

Earlier this month a 17-year-old Melbourne teenager was arrested in a raid on his family home after allegedly planning a bomb attack.