Canada rejects repatriating nationals from camps in NE Syria
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The Canadian government detailed its legal position for the first time regarding Canadians captured during the fight against Islamic State Organization (ISIS) in Syria, in response to a lawsuit by families of the detainees.
It would be “unprecedented and unprincipled” to help Canadian ISIS suspects detained in northeastern Syria, Global News said, citing the federal government as saying.
The detainees’ families want the Federal Court to order Ottawa to bring the detainees back to Canada from camps run by Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), according to the source.
Sally Lane, mother of Jack Letts, a Canadian man detained in northeastern Syria, called on the federal government to send a delegate overseas to help free her son and other Canadians detained in “atrocious conditions.”
Lane accused the federal government of doing “precisely nothing” to secure her son’s release.
“The case should be dismissed, since accepting the families’ claims would improperly extend the Charter of Rights beyond Canada’s borders,” the source added, citing federal lawyers.
In late November, officials of Foreign Affairs Department in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria received an official Canadian delegation.
The delegation included Sebastien Beaulieu, Director of Security and Emergency Management for Global Affairs of Canada, Rasta Daei, Head of Office of Embassy of Canada in Syria and Lebanon, and Tariq Gordon, Deputy Director of Threat Assessment Division in Canada’s Global Affairs.
On October 26, Canada’s Ministry of Global Affairs repatriated four nationals of ISIS family members from camps in northeastern Syria.
However, a day later, Canadian police arrested the repatriated two women, as one of whom charged with four terrorism-related offences, including working for ISIS.
In its defense against the legal action by their families in Federal Court, the government said they were being held for their alleged affiliation to a terrorist organization and Canada was not required to help them.
The federal lawyers insisted in their argument that “the government was not duty-bound to repatriate Canadians detained abroad, and had not breached their rights by failing to do so,” according to the source.
The government lawyers argued that would be “an unprincipled and far-reaching expansion of the extra-territorial application of the Charter” and “should be rejected.”