Australia news LIVE: Director of camp holding IS brides says they presented valid documents, passports; Close associate of Martin Luther King Jr and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson dies at 84

The Australian men who travelled to Syria to return 34 ISIS-affiliated women and children to Australia had presented “valid documents and passports for the families”, detention camp director Hakamia Ibrahim confirmed.

In an exclusive interview with this masthead yesterday, Ibrahim said: “We photographed the families’ passports and made copies. I personally saw the passports and obtained copies of them – this is a security measure.”

Ibrahim declined to show the images to a journalist working for this masthead, but authorities in the north-east of Syria have always required valid travel documents before families can be released from the camp.

Ibrahim also said that, since the women were turned around on the highway and returned to the camp on Monday, it was unclear if they would obtain permission to travel at all.

The confirmation that Australia has issued passports appears to fly in the face of comments by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday that the government “won’t be providing assistance” to the women and children to return home to Australia.

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Good morning and welcome to our national news live blog for Wednesday, February 18. My name is Emily Kaine, and I’ll be helming our coverage this morning. Here’s what is making headlines.

• The Australian men who travelled to Syria to return 34 ISIS-affiliated women and children to Australia had presented “valid documents and passports for the families”, detention camp director Hakamia Ibrahim confirmed in an interview with this masthead. The confirmation that Australia has issued passports appears to fly in the face of comments by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday that the government “won’t be providing assistance” to the women and children to return home to Australia.

• Opposition Leader Angus Taylor revealed his new-look frontbench yesterday, which will see Deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume and Goldstein MP Tim Wilson leading the opposition’s effort to regain the party’s image as better managers of the economy, and right-wingers Andrew Hastie and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price promoted to counter the threat of One Nation.
• Randa Abdel-Fattah will headline The Sydney Writers’ Festival – Australia’s biggest literary event – just weeks after the Adelaide Writers’ Week was cancelled following a mass boycott when the Palestinian-Australian academic was dumped from its line-up.
• In Western Australia, a man who allegedly threw a homemade bomb into a crowd of protesters at an Invasion Day rally in Perth’s CBD was identified for the first time after a suppression order on his identity was lifted yesterday.
• In world news, charismatic US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, an eloquent Baptist minister raised in the segregated South who became a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr and twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, has died at age 84, his family said in a statement late last night (AEDT).

Follow along as we bring you rolling news updates throughout the day.