Revealed: The 13 Australians who could face the death penalty in Iraq

A number of Australias 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”.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade policies say government should support and advocate for Australians sentenced to death or at risk of the death penalty overseas. Approached on this question on Wednesday, the department had no comment, emphasising the government would not repatriate the men.

Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council announced on Tuesday that its courts had completed the interrogation phase of its post-IS investigation and moved into the “judicial phase”, under which thousands of foreign nationals would face trial.

Under Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Law No. 13, “perpetrators, accomplices and those who incite, plan, fund or enable” terror offences can be sentenced to death. Those who conceal terrorist acts or harbour terrorists are liable for life sentences.

An American, a Finnish man, seven Iraqis and 457 Syrians have been released because there was insufficient evidence against them, the announcement said, suggesting all the Australians will proceed to trial.

The Iraqi authorities said six defendants were suspected of direct connection to the enslavement of Yazidi women, but did not identify the nationalities of the suspects.

When Melbourne grandmother Kawsar Abbas and her daughter Zeinab Ahmad were repatriated to Australia, they were charged with allegedly keeping a Yazidi teenager as a slave. They deny the allegations. Abbas’ husband, Mohammed Ahmad, is one of the Australian men now facing trial in Iraq.

Tareq Kamleh: The so-called “Dr Jihad,” Perth-born pediatrician Kamleh, was until recently thought to have been dead. During IS’s reign of terror, the former playboy made at least one propaganda video for the terror group declaring “we love death more than you love life”.

Mohammed Ahmad: Formerly of Melbourne, Ahmad travelled to Turkey in 2012 with his charity Global Humanitarian Aid Australia, which is suspected to have been a front to fund the family’s entry to the caliphate. His wife Kawsar Abbas and daughter Zeinab Ahmad returned to Australia recently. Both face slavery-related charges in Melbourne, which they deny.