Photo: Omar Albam Archives Associated Press General view of the Karama camp for internally displaced Syrians, February 2022, Syria.
Anya Karadeglija – The Canadian Press in Ottawa
April 10, 2024
- Middle East
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, said Global Affairs Canada plans to return the children, aged five to 12.
He said the government is working with the Polarization clinic in Montreal, which supports families affected by radicalization. The clinic will welcome children who do not have family in Montreal and who will probably be placed in foster families if the mother is not back in the country.
Mr. Greenspon said the mother is now out of the camp and wants to return to Canada to be with her children. “Presumably his intention is to find his way back,” he said.
The federal government refused to repatriate the woman, whose identity is not public, because authorities believe she poses a security risk, according to Mr. Greenspon.
He said the government had repatriated other Canadian women from Syrian detention camps and had put in place measures to deal with this risk, such as placing them on peace bonds public.
The family are among many foreign nationals held in Syrian prisons and camps run by Kurdish forces who have retaken the war-torn region from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.
Although the federal government decided not to facilitate the woman's return, it offered repatriation assistance to her six children, leaving the woman with the choice of sending the children to Canada on her own or keeping them with her in the sordid camp of al-Roj.
Mr. Greenspon argued that “the mother had an impossible choice.”
No date has been set for the children's arrival in Canada, but Mr. Greenspon said he is optimistic about the government's ability to “act quickly to bring the children safely home.” house.”