‘He’s been freed, thank God’
Iraq releases Canadian held over visa issues
A Canadian military veteran who had been detained by Iraqi authorities after spending six months fighting ISIL has been released, his mother said Tuesday.
“He’s been freed, thank God,” Kay Kennedy said shortly after her son, Michael Kennedy, phoned home from Erbil to say he was no longer being held. “I am so happy you couldn’t imagine.”
She said he told her he had been detained with three Americans and two Germans over travel visa problems. While Kennedy had a valid Iraqi visa, his travelling companions did not.
When Iraqi authorities arrested the Americans and Germans, Kennedy insisted they take him as well.
“He did not want to let his group end up in prison without him,” she said, adding the others remained in their cell but expected to be released soon and that all would be home by Christmas.
A Royal Canadian Navy veteran, Kennedy, 32, is one of hundreds of international volunteers fighting alongside Kurdish militias on the front lines against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The Kurdistan Regional Government ( KRG) has a history of arresting anti-ISIL volunteers as they are leaving Syria through Iraq. Officially they are held for visa violations, but some believe it has more to do with tensions between Iraqi and Syrian Kurds.
The Kurdistan government is aligned with Turkey, which is fighting the Syrian YPG militia and its sister the PKK, said Guillaume Corneau, a Laval University Québec student who has been studying the foreign fighters with Kurdish forces.
“One thing that I am sure is that the KRG does it on purpose to harass the YPG and particularly the foreigners. It does it probably to please Turkey. The latter hates those foreigners. In Turkish newspapers, there are some reports on the volunteers, calling them terrorists,” he said.
After leaving the navy in March, Kennedy made his own way to Syria to join the fight against ISIL. After four months with the YPG militia in Syria, he crossed into Iraq, intending to join the fight in Mosul. He told the National Post on Oct. 26 he was in Shingal with Yazidi militias. “We will soon be heading towards Mosul to push into the city,” he said in a message sent on Facebook.
Last Monday, however, he told his mother, who lives in Saint Vincent’s, N. L., that he was in Dohuk, Iraq, and would be leaving the next day to catch a flight to Dubai and then Toronto.
But she was l ater i nformed he had been detained in Erbil. She contacted Global Affairs Canada on Saturday and by Monday Newfoundland Liberal MP and cabinet minister Judy Foote got involved.