Notorious ISIS doctor who vowed never to return to Australia is alive - and now 'Dr Jihad' wants to come home

By KYLIE STEVENS, SENIOR BREAKING NEWS REPORTER, AUSTRALIA Published: 00:23, 22 July 2026 | Updated: 00:29, 22 July 2026 A notorious paediatrician who abandoned Australia to join Islamic State in the Middle East is reportedly alive in an Iraqi jail and wants to return home - almost a decade after he was declared dead. Tareq Kamleh became a poster boy for ISIS in 2015 when he appeared in propaganda videos wearing western-style surgical scrubs and holding babies, urging other medical professionals to join the notorious death cult. Two years later, ISIS fighters shared online posts claiming that Kamleh, nicknamed 'Dr Jihad', had been killed in Syria during the final battle of Raqqa. It has since emerged that Kamleh, now 41, is alive and well, holed up in a high-security prison in Baghdad, where he is being interrogated by Iraqi counter-terrorism officials. He is one of 13 men linked to ISIS hoping to be released from custody and return to Australia, The Australian reported. This is despite previously vowing to never return to Australia. Following his 'death' in the Raqqa siege, it is understood Kamleh continued working as a mobile field doctor for another two years before he was arrested in 2019 while 'shifting through the frontlines of the Caliphate'. The update came weeks after 10 ISIS brides and their children returned to Australia from Syria. ISIS previously claimed that Perth-born poster boy Tareq Kamleh was killed in 2017 But he is reportedly alive in an Iraqi jail and wants to return home, almost a decade after he was 'killed' It remains to be seen whether Kamleh will be able to return to Australia. 'We won't be providing assistance, just as we haven't provided assistance to others to come back,' Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt told the Today show on Wednesday. 'We've made clear for some time now that we won't be providing any assistance as a government to anyone who's made the absolutely awful decision to join a foreign terrorist organisation.' Housing Minister Clare O'Neil told Sunrise: 'As far as I'm concerned, I never want that person to return to Australia.' 'He's obviously made a decision to join a violent death cult, and he needs to be accountable for that.' Perth-born Kamleh completed his medical studies at Adelaide University, where he worked as a paediatric registrar at the Adelaide Women's and Children's Hospital until 2013. He moved to north Queensland where he worked at Mackay Base Hospital, before relocating briefly back to Perth, where he continued his medical career until March 2015. Kamleh reportedly told fellow mosque parishioners at the time that he was heading overseas to work with Doctors Without Borders. Tareq Kamleh appeared in propaganda videos urging other medical professionals to join ISIS Kamleh previously vowed to never return to Australia Instead, he flew to Kuala Lumpur, where he travelled to Turkey and crossed the border into Syria, where he began appearing in ISIS propaganda videos weeks later. Kamleh previously vowed to never return to Australia. 'I made a very well-educated and calculated decision to come here, it did not involve any brainwashing,' a letter to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency in 2015 states. 'I have come here as there are locals suffering from normal medical conditions despite being surrounded by war, with an overt lack of qualified medical care.' 'Is it not my humanitarian duty to help these children also? … or only kids with white skin and blue passports?' 'I never intend to return to Australia, I have finally returned home.'