Mariam Dabboussy | |
---|---|
Born | 1992 (age 32–33) |
Nationality | Australian |
Known for | lived in IS controlled Syria |
Mariam Dabboussy is an Australian woman who lived in IS controlled Syria. [1] [2]
Dabboussy told The New York Times that she never planned to enter Daesh territory. [3] She said she travelled to Turkey, with her husband, on what he said was an expedition to help his relatives escape Syria. But she claimed she was the victim of a trick, and that, once they were within walking distance of the border he pulled a gun and forced her into Syria at gunpoint.
The Australian television series Four Corners devoted an episode to Dabboussy. [2] Dabboussy raised her veil during her television interview, an act she said could trigger retaliation from the most devout occupants of the al-Hawl refugee camp. [4] She told reporters that her brother in law, Mohammed, convinced or coerced at least a dozen Australians into IS territory. [5] Reporters who compared those images with her wedding photos, described her face as "wizened".
Her father's efforts to convince the Australian government to repatriate her have received worldwide attention. [1] [2] [6] [7] [8] He assured the Australian public that his granddaughter, and the other Australian refugees, had all agreed to be subject to a control order, when they were repatriated. [9] Her father told Radio New Zealand that Australian security officials were well aware she had been duped into entering IS territory, as he wasn't aware she was in IS territory, and they told him she had been duped. [10]
Dabboussy married in 2011, and lived with her husband's family after she became pregnant in 2014. [4] She attributed her husband Khaled's ploy to trick her into Syria to his elder brother Mohammed. She had given birth to her first child, prior to her arrival in Syria, and was pregnant with a second child. Her husband was killed within three months of her arrival, and prior to the birth of her second child. By 2019 she had given birth to a third child.
In 2022, Dabboussy was repatriated after being flown from Iraq to New South Wales. [11]
'It's tough; it's scary,' he told his daughter, Mariam, during a recent phone call. Mr. Dabboussy tried to comfort her. 'We're still pushing,' he said.
While the details of many of the women's stories are unknown, some have come forward to explain themselves, including Mariam Dabboussy. She says that in late 2015, she was forced by gunpoint over the Turkish border with Syria, after traveling there in what her husband claimed was an attempt to extract a relative who was trying to escape the Islamic State.
Another looks vastly different to her Australian wedding photos. In the pictures, Mariam Dabboussy, smiles broadly, hair down to her shoulders. Now she sits head to toe in black, visibly wizened.
Mariam Dabboussy is risking her safety to reveal how her brother-in-law Muhammad Zahab delivered her and her baby into the grip of the Islamic State (IS) group.
Kamalle Dabboussy visited Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday to ask federal politicians to intervene to rescue the stranded Australians. He said Australia could still safely liberate its citizens from the war zone.
Mariam Dabboussy's father Kamalle Dabboussy continues to lobby the government to help Australians stuck in the a Hawl refugee camp in Syria.
Dabboussy, whose daughter Mariam was reportedly coerced by a relative into going to Syria, said the feeling on the ground was one of apprehension, not of Turkish control itself, but of a resistance to any Turkish offensive plunging the volatile region back into war. Any transition from Kurdish to Turkish control is unlikely to be smooth.
'The women have all agreed to be subject to control orders if they return, and the government has not accepted that offer. Instead, all we've got is police raids. That, in my view, is a heavy-handed response.'
When it comes to his daughter, he said she was coerced into that space, and that was something the authorities understood too. 'The first I knew my daughter was there was when the authorities knocked on my door and told me your daughter is in Syria and she was coerced into going there, that was the line they used.'