{"id":714699,"date":"2026-06-04T11:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T11:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/714699\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T11:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T11:56:10","slug":"australian-woman-linked-to-islamic-state-lived-with-teenage-slave-who-was-repeatedly-raped-court-told-melbourne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/714699\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian woman linked to Islamic State lived with teenage slave who was repeatedly raped, court told | Melbourne"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman accused of marrying Islamic State<\/a> fighters allegedly lived with a teenage slave who was repeatedly assaulted and raped by the woman\u2019s father.<\/p>\n

The allegations were detailed in Melbourne<\/a> magistrates court on Thursday as Zeinab Ahmad, 31, applied for bail, a month after she was charged with slavery offences.<\/p>\n

Australian federal police allege Ahmad left Melbourne to go to Turkey with her husband, Dawod, in November 2014.<\/p>\n

She told migration officers her plan was to stay there for seven months, but it is alleged the couple instead moved to Syria<\/a> in January 2015.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email <\/a><\/p>\n

Dawod became an IS member but died in a Syrian drone strike in May 2016, Det Sen Const Marc Clendenning told the court.<\/p>\n

After his death, it is alleged Ahmad made social media posts saying Dawod had lived out his dream of becoming a martyr.<\/p>\n

It is also alleged Ahmad made a post calling on Allah to \u201cdestroy the United States and its allies\u201d.<\/p>\n

Police say Ahmad was living in the family home in Syria in 2017 when her father, Mohammad, bought a teenage girl as a slave for $US10,000.<\/p>\n

It is alleged the girl was repeatedly raped and beaten by Mohammad, including an incident where she was hit and dragged down two flights of stairs by the hair.<\/p>\n

The girl told police she had screamed loudly during the incidents so Ahmad and the other family members would have known what was happening, the detective said.<\/p>\n

It is not alleged Ahmad assaulted the girl but the teen claims she was \u201ctreated very badly\u201d by the woman.<\/p>\n

The girl allegedly lived with the Ahmad family for 16 months before she was sold in November 2018.<\/p>\n

The teen was sold a further seven times before she was freed from slavery.<\/p>\n

Ahmad and her mother, Kawsar, 52, were among a group of IS-linked women and their children who returned to Australia in May.<\/p>\n

She was arrested at Melbourne airport and charged with offences of enslavement and using a slave.<\/p>\n

Human rights activist Robert Van Aalst, who helped the women and children return to Australia from Syria, attended court on Thursday along with supporters of Ahmad.<\/p>\n

In opposing bail on Thursday, Clendenning told the court Ahmad was an unacceptable risk of endangering the community.<\/p>\n

She had married another two IS members and was still married to an Egyptian-born fighter whose location was unknown, the detective told the court.<\/p>\n

Ahmad had never explicitly renounced IS and she pursued living under the terror group in Syria, Clendenning said.<\/p>\n

He said she had been employed by IS and had encouraged violence against individuals and governments.<\/p>\n

The bail application before Chief Magistrate Lisa Hannan will continue on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman accused of marrying Islamic State fighters allegedly lived with a teenage slave who was repeatedly assaulted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-714699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}