Canadians set to be returned from Syrian detention camps, but mother may be separated from six children, advocates say

At least 19 Canadian citizens who have been detained for years in Syrian detention camps for suspected members of the Islamic State are on the verge of being repatriated to Canada, the Star has learned.Aboard the repatriation flight will be six women and at least 13 children detained in the Kurdish-run Roj and Al-Hawl camps, lawyer Lawrence Greenspon said in an interview.“We have been in contact with at least one of the ... women, and they indicated that they are on the move,” Greenspon said.Alexandra Bain, who runs Families against Violent Extremism, a group that has been advocating for the rights of the detainees, said she received a long-awaited text message from one of the women, a mother of three, with a code word — “cake” — indicating that she was being readied by Canadian and camp officials to leave Syria.Greenspon said the federal government is also offering to bring six other detained children back to Quebec, but not their mother. He said Global Affairs Canada officials told him the children had been cleared for return to Canada, but that a security assessment on the woman had not yet been completed.Greenspon, who represents the woman and her family, said he was asked Tuesday night to speak with her and obtain her consent to put her young children on the repatriation flight without her.He said he told government officials: “She wants her six children to be repatriated and ... she wants to come home to Quebec with them.”Greenspon said he had not yet received a response to the woman’s proposition.Global Affairs did not immediately return a request for comment.“It’s preposterous,” he told the Star on Wednesday. “It’s a preposterous reason to separate a mother from her six children. She’s a Canadian. She’s a Canadian mother.”The Islamic State, or ISIS, is a designated terrorist group that was formed in the chaos of the Syrian civil war. The brutal and media-savvy organization drew tens of thousands of young Muslims to its ranks with the declaration of an Islamic caliphate headquartered in Raqqa, Syria.At its most powerful, it controlled vast swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq, but its fighting capabilities were degraded and its members were killed, captured or detained after a coalition military operation. The fate of those captured and suspected of having supported or fought with ISIS has been left to the Kurdish-run Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria, which controls territory and runs the sprawling detention camps south of the Turkish border.The repatriation flight would end years of limbo for those who have spent years living in the sprawling, overpopulated camps, where there is limited access to food, education and medical facilities.Investigators from the RCMP have been in northeastern Syria for the past week, meeting with Canadian detainees and preparing to bring some of them home. The actual repatriation follows a strict protocol set by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, which controls the territory south of Syria’s border with Turkey.Canadian officials meet with Kurdish officials in a signing and handover ceremony, during which they formally take custody of the detainees before flying them out of the region.Greenspon, who represented the Canadian detainees in a Federal Court case that ruled their citizenship granted them the right to re-enter the country, would typically only be formally notified of their imminent return a few hours before the repatriation flight is due to land in Canada.A number of Canadian citizens will be left behind. They include 10 Canadian children who live in the camps with their non-Canadian mothers. Asiya Hijri, a lawyer for two of the non-Canadian mothers and six Canadian children, said that government officials did not respond to inquiries from one of her clients about repatriating a child with severe autism who requires medical attention.“Global Affairs Canada was supposed to get back to me,” she told the Star in a text message Tuesday night. “They didn’t. They never even responded.”There are also six Canadian men who are imprisoned — among them is Jack Letts, a Brit who was born to Canadian parents, but whose British citizenship was revoked in 2019.The Federal court case ruled that four of the men detained in Syria also have the right to be returned to Canada. But while Ottawa struck a deal to repatriate the detained women and children, the government has appealed the ruling related to the detained men.Allan Woods is a Montreal-based staff reporter for the Star. He covers global and national affairs. Follow him on Twitter: @WoodsAllan