6 kids to be repatriated from Syrian detention
Canada won’t repatriate mom, deemed a risk
• Six children, but not their Canadian mother, will be repatriated to Canada from a detention camp in Syria.
Lawyer Lawrence Greenspon, who represents the mother, says Global Affairs is planning the return of the children, who are between the ages of five and 12.
He says the government is working with the Polarization Clinic in Montreal, which supports families affected by radicalization. The clinic will receive the children, who don’t have family in Montreal and will likely end up placed in foster care if the mother is not back in the country.
Greenspon says the mother is now out of the camp and wants to return to Canada to be with her children. “Presumably her intention is to find her way back,” he said.
The federal government has refused to repatriate the woman, whose identity is not public, because officials believe she poses a security risk, according to Greenspon.
He said the government has repatriated other Canadian women from Syrian camps and put in place measures to address that risk, such as placing them under terrorist peace bonds.
Although the federal government decided not to facilitate the woman’s return, it offered repatriation assistance to her six children, leaving her to decide whether to send the children to Canada on their own or keep them with her in the squalid al-roj camp. Greenspon said “the mom was given an impossible choice.”
There is no timeline for when the children will arrive in Canada, but Greenspon said he is optimistic the government will “move expeditiously to bring the children home to safety.”
The family is among many foreign nationals in Syrian camps and prisons run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-torn region from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Last month, four Canadian men detained in Syria asked the Supreme Court of Canada to reconsider pleas for a hearing that could open the door to their freedom.
In November, the top court declined to hear the men’s challenge of a Federal Court of Appeal ruling that said Ottawa is not obligated under the law to repatriate them.
Following its usual custom, the court gave no reasons at the time for refusing to examine the matter.
In the latest notice filed with the top court, lawyers for the men say exceedingly rare circumstances warrant another look at the application for leave to appeal.
One of the men, Jack Letts, became a devoted Muslim as a teen, went on holiday to Jordan, then studied in Kuwait before ending up in Syria.