Daesh-linked Australian women charged with keeping slave in Syria

Two Australian women "kept a female slave" after travelling to Syria in 2014 to support the Daesh (Islamic State, IS) group, police said Friday after the pair were charged in Melbourne. 

The pair returned to Australia on Thursday evening for the first time in almost a decade, travelling from a Syrian detention camp where they were stranded after the group's collapse. 

Arrest

They were immediately arrested after their Qatar Airways flight landed at Melbourne International airport. 

Police accused the women -- a mother and daughter aged 53 and 31 -- of "crimes against humanity" while living under Daesh's self-declared "caliphate". 

The 53-year-old woman was "complicit in the purchase of a female slave for US$10,000", the Australian Federal Police said. 

The 31-year-old woman had "knowingly kept a female slave in the home". 

Hundreds of women from Western nations were lured to the Middle East as the Islamic State group (Daesh) gained prominence in the early 2010s, in many cases following husbands who had signed up as jihadist fighters.

Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and others are still grappling with how to treat citizens stranded after the group collapsed.