‘Still like a child’: Family believes Australian taken to Syria as a boy could be released soon

The family of a young Australian taken as a 12-year-old boy to live under Islamic State in 2015 believes he could be released in coming weeks after indications emerging from Iraq that he would not face trial as a criminal.

This masthead has been unable to independently confirm that Yusuf Zahab will soon be released, and can only say that sources close to his family believe it is likely.

Yusuf Zahab in a school photo during his time in Sydney, before he was taken to Islamic State territory as a child.SBSZahab was a child when his parents took him to live in the so-called caliphate in Syria. When he was 16, the terrorist regime fell, and he was separated from his mother and taken into a prison for men.

He’s now 23 and in February was transferred from Syria to a prison in Iraq with about 12 other Australians and thousands of other alleged foreign fighters. The Iraqi government plans to put the bulk of them on trial under threat of the death penalty.

Information now emerging from Iraq suggests Zahab might not be among them.

A source close to the Zahab family, speaking on condition of anonymity to maintain their privacy, said Yusuf “absolutely had no agency” in the family’s decision to go to Syria in early 2015, and that, after seven years in prison, “he’s still like a child … It’s literally like Yusuf who left Australia as a child at 12.”

Yusuf Zahab being interviewed by SBS Dateline in a Syrian prison in 2024. He has since been moved to Iraq.Colin CosierDespite his youth, the Australian government has made it clear it will not help him return. Its official position is to regard Zahab as being one of the “ISIS-linked individuals” it will refuse to repatriate.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s office declined to comment on his case for privacy reasons.

Zahab was issued a passport in January along with a group of 34 women and children who have since returned from detention camps in Syria, so if he was released, he could potentially find his own way home.

Advocate Kylie Moore-Gilbert said the Australian government had a responsibility to repatriate Zahab and help his rehabilitation.

Yusuf’s mother, Aminah Zahab.SBSYusuf Zahab’s mother, Aminah, sister Sumaya and cousin Nesrine were in a group of Australian women and children who returned from Syrian detention camps in May. Yusuf’s father, Hicham, remains in prison in Iraq.

The source close to the family said they were frustrated with the Australian government, as officials had not visited Yusuf since June, claiming the situation was too dangerous.

“We get information in dribs and drabs, and half the time the department don’t know,” the source said, adding that, according to the Australian government’s information, Zahab was still under active investigation by Iraqi authorities.

“They’re trying to get more information with regards to the process itself … It really breaks your heart. It’s like, what is our citizenship worth?”

Yusuf Zahab as a Sydney schoolboy before his family took him to Syria.After the June consular visit, the source said, they had heard that Yusuf was “good”, but had pain in his head and arm from injuries he suffered in 2022 during an IS siege of a Syrian prison where he was held.

Zahab believed there was still shrapnel in his wounds, the source said.

Moore-Gilbert, who founded the Australian Wrongful and Arbitrary Detention Alliance after her own false imprisonment in Iran, said Zahab’s youth made him a victim, not a criminal.

“Yusuf was wrongfully detained in prison without committing any crime whatever, because of who his family were,” Moore-Gilbert said. “We do not in Australia normally think of children of bad people being complicit in the crimes of their parents.

“He was an innocent boy who has spent years in prison and is now a young man. We have a duty to bring him home and to rehabilitate him and try to bring his life back after god knows what horrors he’s endured.”

The family claims they were tricked into going to Syria by another son, Muhammad, who died in the fighting.

Six French nationals are currently on trial in Baghdad and face the death penalty. Their lawyers have argued they should be tried in France, saying the Iraqi proceedings are so truncated they are unable to offer a proper defence.

American forces quit Iraq on Wednesday for the first time in 15 years after President Donald Trump enacted a Joe Biden-era agreement. The withdrawal prompted fears the country will not have the capacity to house thousands of former Islamic State prisoners, including Australians, or that Iran or Islamic State could dramatically increase their influence in the country.

Previous mass trials of IS suspects faced international criticism for being too hasty and for extracting confessions by force.

In March, two young men – one from Finland and the other from the United States – were released after Iraqi authorities found no evidence of IS affiliation. More than 450 Syrians and seven Iraqis were also released because of insufficient evidence against them.

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