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A Father’s Plea

The heartbreaking story of one man’s fight to free his daughter and grandchildren from an Islamic State nightmare

When Mariam married her childhood sweetheart in a fairytale Sydney wedding, her father Kamalle dreamed of a beautiful future for his family. When the young couple and their baby daughter went on an overseas holiday, he couldn’t have been happier. But a dark secret was lurking on the horizon. They would not be returning as planned.

Mariam disappeared. Months later, Kamalle was informed by the Australian government that his daughter had been coerced into Syria. He later learnt that she had been forced at gunpoint, by her husband, across the border into Syria and into the clutches of ISIS. When her husband was killed, Mariam was forced to marry another ISIS fighter, with whom she had another child. When he was killed she was forced to marry again; she was trapped. But with the defeat of ISIS, instead of being brought home, Mariam and her three young children were demonised as ‘foreign fighters’, forced to languish in refugee camps while their home country refused to repatriate them.

For years, Kamalle worked with international agency Save the Children to try to bring home his daughter and grandkids, who were abandoned among 20 Australian adults and 47 children. All the while, law enforcement and government agencies in Australia told him that keeping quiet would be in their best interests. Kamalle never gave up hope. Now he tells his story of his long battle to free his loved ones.