More than half the Canadians once detained in Syrian camps for suspected ISIS family members have returned home

A general view of Karama camp for internally displaced Syrians, Monday, Feb. 14, 2022 by the village of Atma, Idlib province, Syria. (Omar Albam / The Canadian Press / The Associated Press)

A total of 29 Canadians have been freed from detention camps in northeast Syria and brought back to Canada since human rights advocates began lobbying for their release years ago.

In an email, Ottawa lawyer Lawrence Greenspon, who represented children who were repatriated days ago, said that since repatriation efforts began in 2020, a total of 22 children and seven women have come home.

The most recent repatriation took place earlier this week when the six children of a Quebec woman were brought back to Montreal on a flight organized by Global Affairs Canada.

The two girls and four boys, who have no family in Canada, have been placed under the care of social workers from the Clinique de Polarization in Montreal.

The siblings were transported out of Syria on a U.S. military plane.

In a statement, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged governments to use “thoughtfulness and flexibility to ensure that to the maximum extent possible family units remain intact.”

The first successful repatriation occurred four years ago. In October 2020, five-year-old Amira was reunited with her uncle and grandparents in Toronto. Her parents and siblings were killed in an airstrike during the final days of the war against ISIS.

Amira’s return sparked what Greenspon calls the “thin edge of the wedge” advocacy which involved a series of applications before the Federal Court intended to push Global Affairs Canada to “do the right and just thing.”

In his email, Greenspon notes that of the seven women, one faced criminal charges, while five others were placed on terrorist peace bonds.

“None of the peace bond conditions have been breached,” wrote Greenspon.

Global Affairs officials were initially hesitant to bring back the women due to concerns they had married alleged ISIS fighters.

But there are still at least 17 Canadians languishing in camps and prisons run by Kurdish authorities on Syria’s border with Turkiye.

Greenspon said that there are still eight Canadian children of three foreign mothers in the camps, which are described as open-air prisons. He does not represent those children.

One woman, “Asiya,” spoke to CTV News about her anguish after learning that GAC agreed to bring home her children but not her.

Some of the foreign mothers are fighting against forced family separation in federal court.

The men are suspected of joining ISIS, but have not been charged. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) has said that it does not have the legal infrastructure to investigate and prosecute the prisoners.

A comprehensive report released in April by Amnesty International found that detainees were facing “systematic human rights violations and dying in large numbers due to inhumane conditions.”

Amnesty’s researchers also found that the majority of people in the camps and prisons may have been arbitrarily detained and that many were actually victims of ISIS.