Three women repatriated from Syria have been charged with serious offences under Australian law, but the response from political leaders risks undermining the right to a fair trial.

On return to Australia last week of four women and nine children from Syria, pejoratively known as the ISIS brides, three found themselves charged with criminal offences – Kawsar Abbas, 54, her daughter Zeinab Ahmad, 31 in Melbourne, and a 32 year old woman in Sydney.

All have been charged with Commonwealth Criminal Code (Code) offences. What we know from an Australian Federal Police media statement last Friday and the subsequent release of details of the charges later that day is that they are alleged to have committed slavery offences.

Both are charged with slavery and using a slave, and Ms Abbas is charged with possessing a slave and engaging in slave trading.

The AFP provided these details in its statement; “It will be alleged the woman [Abbas] travelled to Syria in 2014 with her husband and children, and was complicit in the purchase of a female slave for $US10,000 ($13,875) and knowingly kept the woman in the home.’

The charge sheets released by the Melbourne Magistrates Court tell us that Ms Abbas is accused of trading a person in Syria’s Deir ez-Zur province near the Iraqi border in June 2017,........

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