Australian ISIS fighter Khaled Sharrouf may have ruined his children’s last chance at making it back to Australia after an attempt to smuggle them out of Syria last year was botched when he insisted on coming with them.
A smuggler with ties to Islamic State told The Australian earlier this year he had been in contact with Sharrouf’s late wife’s parents, who were desperate for the return of their grandchildren.
The man, known as Abu Jassem, told the paper Sharrouf was ‘really crazy’, and had intended to escape the Middle East but not return to Australia.
Australian ISIS fighter Khaled Sharrouf (right) reportedly hijacked a plot to extract his five children from Syria by demanding to come too
‘He knew he couldn’t come back to his own country. He was thinking of maybe moving to South Africa after escaping,’ he said.
‘He was really crazy, really mentally crazy.’
It is now believed the 36-year-old died in a US airstrike on Raqqa last night, along with his sons Abdullah, 12, and Zarqawi, 11.
Sharrouf has three remaining children, Zaynab, 16, Hoda, 15, and Humzeh, 7, whose locations are unknown.
An Australian effort to extract the remaining three children is unlikely, with Immigration Minister Peter Dutton telling reporters last month Sharrouf had ‘poisoned [the children’s] minds’.
The children were supposed to be extracted last year, but Sharrouf was desperate to come along and wanted to go to Africa
The smuggler charged with finding the children said Sharrouf was ‘really mentally crazy’
Fears for the five children began in 2014 when Sharrouf’s son, aged seven at the time, was pictured holding a severed head (pictured)
‘If they’ve been killed along with their father that is regrettable in terms of the children but that is a decision that was made by the parents,’ he said.
Mr Dutton said Sharrouf was a ‘despicable human being’, and he would ‘welcome’ his death.
It is not known who ordered the 2016 extraction attempt, with Mr Jassem claiming he received more than $10,000 from the grandparents of Sharrouf’s children, but both denying they played a role.
Peter Nettleton told The Australian he thought it may have been related to Karen Nettleton’s attempt to extract the children from Turkey, which was abandoned after a media frenzy.
But Charles Waterstreet, who has represented Ms Nettleton as a lawyer in the past, says he believes the matters are unrelated.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton last month labelled Sharrouf a ‘despicable human being’ and ‘welcomed’ news of his death