The overwhelming majority of Australians who have returned home after fighting in Syria and Iraq did so more than two years ago - and before Islamic State existed, the head of the nation's chief spy agency says.
ASIO Director-General Duncan Lewis has confirmed that many of the approximately 30 foreign fighters who had returned to Australia did so "several years ago" and well before Islamic State declared a caliphate.
"I can say that the vast majority of those 30 returned to Australia before there was even an ISIL, before the caliphate was declared," Mr Lewis told a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday evening.
"Some of them fall into the category of those who were fighting in the Syrian civil war on both sides."
He refused to detail the breakdown of numbers in terms of those who had returned in the past two years.
Mr Lewis said the 30 who had returned presented "varying degrees of threat to the community", and were included in a "matrix" that evaluates and prioritises the seriousness of the cases.
"We do not have a watchlist as such," he said.
"We manage ... the threat that is presented and the prioritising of that threat and then the attention that is given to that particular threat."
Mr Lewis confirmed dozens of young Australian women had "either gone or contemplated going" as so-called "jihadi brides".
"There are 30-40 women that are involved in this cohort that we know of, some of whom have been stopped, some of whom have been successful in getting offshore," he said.
"It's a relatively recent phenomenon."
It has been reported some of the women were fighting for Islamic State, but that others were being traded as sex slaves in Syria and Iraq.
Two weeks ago, it was reported several Australian women who had gone to Syria had now become slaves of the terrorist group after their partners were killed.
Share
