OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada has announced that it is repatriating four women and 10 children who have been held for at least three years in Syria in Kurdish-controlled detention camps for relatives of Daesh group terrorists.
“Today, 4 Canadian women and 10 Canadian children are being repatriated to Canada. As long as conditions allow, we will continue this work,” Global Affairs Canada said in a statement.
“We thank the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria [AANES] for its cooperation in conducting this operation under a difficult security situation,” it added, also thanking the U.S. for its assistance in the repatriation.
The Canadian government did not give further details as to which individuals were being repatriated, and it was not clear whether or not the group arriving in Canada included children whose mothers were not given the option to come to the country with their children.
There are at least two dozen Canadians still being held in camps in northeastern Syria after the latest repatriations.
The repatriation could be Canada’s biggest so far after Daesh was defeated in 2019. The news was welcomed by local community groups which have been working and advocating for families inside the Syrian camps.
“We are still waiting for official notice that the plane has landed, bringing four Canadian women home to their families,” Alexandra Bain, director of Families Against Violent Extremism (Fave), told Middle East Eye.
Bain noted that there are still many women and children in the camp that Canada has yet to repatriate.
“While there will be relief and joy in four Canadian homes tonight, many other families have been left empty-handed,” she said.
“Nineteen Canadian children have been left behind in the camps with 7 of their mothers. Six men, a number of them fathers of some of these children, were left behind in the prisons.”
Canada’s announcement of the repatriation comes amid the backdrop of an ongoing legal battle to allow all Canadian nationals to return to the country from the camps in Syria.
On 21 January, Canada decided to take back 23 of its citizens - four men, six women, and 13 children - held in the Kurdish-run camps, after a federal court ruled a day earlier that the four men had to be repatriated.