Six Canadian children are set to leave a Syrian prison camp and fly to Canada without their mother, who cannot come with them because federal officials have not completed her security assessment, advocates for the family say.
The federal government gave the Quebec woman until today to decide whether her children would join other Canadians on the repatriation flight, expected to depart any day now, or remain with her in Syria, said Alexandra Bain of the group Families Against Violent Extremism.
“I’m shocked. It doesn’t make any sense,” Bain said Saturday in an interview. “It’s not how I expect Canada to behave.”
The Canadians are among the many foreign nationals in Syrian camps run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-torn region from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The children, ranging in age from as young as three to 16 years, have no family in Quebec, said Bain, whose organization helps families with loved ones caught up in violent extremist groups. At least two of the six children were born in Syria. There is a plan for Quebec social service agencies to place the six in care, in three groups of two.
The mother, who has no idea if or when she will be allowed to leave al-Roj camp in northeastern Syria, is worried about how she will maintain contact with her youngsters, Bain said.
“She’s doing this for her children. And she’s terrified that she’s doing the wrong thing.”
Added lawyer Lawrence Greenspon, who is assisting the family: “It’s not a choice that any parent should ever have to make.”
Bain and Greenspon requested that the woman’s name not be published due to the sensitivity of the case and related privacy concerns.
Greenspon has argued in Federal Court on behalf of several men, women and children detained in Syria that Global Affairs Canada must arrange for their return, saying that refusing to do so violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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