By Matthew Behrens
The mysterious circumstances surrounding the sudden mid-October death of a Canadian mother of six in a Turkish deportation facility have generated a high-profile call for answers and accountability. They’ve also placed a renewed spotlight on Canada’s ongoing refusal to repatriate 16 arbitrarily detained citizens (along with four non-Canadian mothers and siblings of Canadian children) held without charge up to 7.5 years in brutal North East Syrian prisons and detention camps.
In a detailed letter to Ministers Mélanie Joly (Global Affairs Canada, GAC) and Dominic Leblanc (Public Safety), Senator Kim Pate, international human rights law professor Alex Neve and refugee rights lawyer Hadayt Nazami urged Canada to take immediate steps, “particularly while witnesses are accessible and evidence is fresh,” to launch an expert, independent and impartial investigation into the death of the mother, known as FJ.
The potential roles played by GAC officials and the RCMP in events leading up to FJ’s death eerily recall the troubling history of Canadian officials found to have contributed to the overseas detention and torture of Canadians including Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati, Muayyed Nureddin, Omar Khadr and Abousfian Abdelrazik, the last currently suing the Canadian government for its complicity in his torture in Sudan.
FJ and her children had been among 50 Canadian men, women and children held for years without charge in an archipelago of detention sites imprisoning tens of thousands of people – half of them children – under the auspices of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the military arm of the Kurdish Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), an ostensible Canadian ally in the Global Coalition Against Daesh (aka ISIS).
The majority of detainees are Iraqis and Syrians uprooted by the mass aerial and ground-level violence unleashed by the Syrian regime’s attacks on Arab Spring protesters, as well as intense bombing by the US-led coalition, and the rapid expansion and subsequent retreat of Daesh. Many report having been forced to move repeatedly in response to multiple military campaigns waged by a series of armed actors from the Syrian regime, Daesh and Russia to the U.S. and Kurdish YPG (“People’s Defence Units”).
Packed into the prison camps and jails are everyone from Daesh loyalists to trafficked women, Yazidi survivors of genocide, and several thousand foreign nationals who had traveled to the region for a diverse set of reasons: from humanitarian volunteers as the Assad regime dropped barrel bombs on its people, to others enticed by the ultimately false promise of an Islamic paradise under the self-declared caliphate. While some joined in the cut-throat violence of Daesh, many report having regrets the moment they arrived, but were unable to escape.
When dozens of Canadian detainees had their case heard by the Federal Court, Justice Henry Brown took note to clarify in a 2023 ruling that, “Notably the [government] Respondents do not allege any of the Applicants [detainees] engaged in or assisted in terrorist activities. The Respondents affirmed this position at the hearing.” He went on to point out that “there is no evidence” before the Court that any detained Canadians had violated the law.
Threshold for Torture
This violence-infused cauldron has been described as “Guantanamo on steroids,” both for conditions described by the United Nations as meeting “the threshold for torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law” and the complete absence of an internationally recognized legal regime through which detention can be meaningfully challenged. While thousands have been slowly repatriated at the request of Kurdish authorities themselves (often with the support of the US State Department and military), numerous countries, including Canada, have only brought their citizens home under political pressure and the threat of legal action.
Canada has invested $2.9 million for the repatriation of Iraqi detainees from North East Syria. At the same time, however, it continues to resist the return of its own citizens, even as Kurdish officials clearly declare that all Ottawa must do is write a letter requesting its citizens, provide travel documents, and send an envoy or third party delegate to the DAANES capital of Qamishli for a sign over, after which the US military would fly the detainees home (as it has frequently done for other detainee, including those from Canada). Ottawa has gone to court to prevent repatriation, variously arguing that it has little to no ability to visit the region (even though its officials have shown up for five separate repatriation signing ceremonies) while claiming social services and state security agents would be “overwhelmed” by the return of a very modest group of traumatized detainees.
However, the federal government’s weak excuses have been easily undermined both by the ease with which 32 Canadian women and children have returned, and the organization of a civil society delegation organized by Pate, Neve, Nazami and former Canadian ambassador Scott Heatherington, all of whom visited Canadian detainees and met with Kurdish officials in August, 2023. It was during that visit that delegation members met FJ.
Alex Neve recalls FJ’s family was a very tight, loving unit, despite being forced to live under the shadow of a Canadian dictate that the children could be repatriated only if they left their mother behind. “She was essentially being forced to choose between maintaining her close and sustaining relationship with her children or sending them, alone, to Canada,” Neve and other letter signatories wrote. “If she had taken that step she had no assurance as to when, if ever, she would be reunited with her children. At the time we pressed the government to ensure the family would be kept together and repatriated to Canada as a family unit.” In addition, “FJ had made it clear to us that she was prepared to answer any allegations leveled against her through a fair legal process in Canada.”
The August 2023 meeting with FJ took place in Al Roj prison camp. It’s been described by the European human rights body Rights and Security as a fundamentally unsafe environment “in which physical violence is common and psychological trauma is endemic, giving rise to apparent breaches of the rights of detainees to life and security of the person, and the freedom from torture and inhumane treatment”. The meeting followed several years of FJ’s repatriation requests that began on December 6, 2021.
A Traumatized Family
On May 12, 2023, a United Nations Special Rapporteur delivered a disturbing report to the Canadian government, detailing FJ and her children’s deteriorating mental and physical health and requesting a response within 60 days. Canada was silent.
That UN report found “an extremely traumatised family in very poor health,” noting FJ “suffered from abscesses and permanent infection from shrapnel/gas/chemicals in the buttocks/perianal/upper thigh area that needed surgery. She had a pass for a wound draining puss, fever, was weak, and in pain. She also suffered the post-childbirth consequences of delivering her child alone in frightening conditions, including malformed healing tissues and internal bleeding. She suffered from anaemia, was underweight, and her teeth revealed calcium deficiency.”
In addition, the report found that FJ was “traumatised by the years she had spent in the camps, multiple imprisonments and torture leading to broken bones, and sudden separation from her children,” as well as by a December 2021 attack on her by prison camp guards.
FJ’s children also suffered from hair loss and calcium deficiencies, were underweight and had no appetite. Three of the four young boys had suffered bouts of hepatitis at least three times, and two had had it four times since they arrived in the prison camps. “Three of them had parasites and worms affecting their digestion,” the grim report continued. “As the six children were all already old enough to understand that their mother had been attacked and was unwell, this caused them a great deal of distress, being aware that their mother relied highly on them. Both girls were described as showing signs of depression and anxiety, as well as severe stress due to helping their mother incessantly with their four younger siblings.” The children suffered severe separation anxiety, and two of them “woke up four to five times a night just to check she was still there.”
Despite having this information in hand, the UN reports that Canada had assessed the children as being eligible for repatriation, but not their mother, leading the rapporteur to remind Canadian officials that “preventing family separation and preserving family unity are essential components of the child protection system.” Indeed, given “the immense closeness and attachment that they have to their mother as the only element of stability in their lives,” the report continued, separation “would cause these young children irreparable trauma.”
While Canada couched its offer to FJ as seeking her permission for family separation, the UN Rapporteur noted “any consent to the repatriation of her children that would be given by [FJ] in the context and circumstances that she finds herself in can never be considered as meaningfully procured. Should [FJ]’s consent be considered as the basis for the repatriation of the children without her, this could amount to forced and arbitrary separation, a clear violation of international law.”
Instead of responding to the UN and working to bring FJ home, Canadian officials were instead busy informing FJ’s then lawyer in a June 21, 2023 letter that she was considered a “threat to public safety and national security because she is assessed to adhere to extremist ideological beliefs which may lead her to act in a violence [sic] manner that would pose a security threat in Canada and the government has no ability to ensure that no such conduct occurs.”
The sharp contrast between that dramatic assessment – factual justification for which was never provided – and the ill health of FJ and her kids was reminiscent of similar baseless, exaggerated threats that are common currency in the so-called Global War on Terror. An internal security memo released to Global News sparked additional doubt about the unsubstantiated fears. While it is unclear if the RCMP or CSIS had questioned FJ before that date, the internal memo revealed that the real concern of state security officials was the lack of evidence to charge her with anything. In the Kafkaesque language of security officials, “In the absence of a charge package or peace bond, F.J. would have freedom of movement upon return to Canada.”
It was unclear how officials believed, without evidence, that someone in such rough shape could pose any threat in Canada, where a broad suite of security legislation is readily accessible to impose charges and conditions on individuals such as other mothers who’ve been successfully returned.
Fractured Return
When a US military flight touched down in Canada on May 7, FJ’s six children disembarked without their mother, winding up separated into units of two in a series of foster families. Ironically, a statement from US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that coincided with their arrival included the hope that, “As governments undertake repatriation of their nationals, we urge thoughtfulness and flexibility to ensure that to the maximum extent possible family units remain intact.”
It appears that FJ – frustrated with the obstacles Canada placed in the way of her right to return, guaranteed by Section 6 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – had conceived a plan that would eventually allow her family to be together in Canada. As the letter from Kim Pate et al. points out, FJ, “likely out of desperation,” escaped from Al Roj several months earlier, apparently with the goal of receiving travel documents from a Canadian mission in Istanbul or Ankara. Unfortunately, she was arrested and detained at the Tarsus Closed Women’s Prison by Turkish authorities on June 14.
FJ received Canadian consular visits on July 16 and October 1, and was apparently interrogated by the RCMP on one or two occasions as well. Following her acquittal on the charges of belonging to a terrorist group (no small achievement in Türkiye, whose judiciary is generally unfavourable to such defendants), FJ was sent to an immigration holding centre to await apparent deportation. She was dead within 48 hours of what Turkish officials claim was a heart attack, even though FJ was only 40 and had no history of cardiac problems.
In the letter to Joly and Leblanc, its authors point out: “We have been told that after one of those visits with either consular officials or the RCMP, her mood and demeanor changed markedly, and that she became seriously depressed and psychologically distressed. She told others that she had been informed that she would never again see her children and that she was going to be sent to face trial in the United States.”
Pate et al have serious questions that they believe should be part of the inquiries made by an independent investigator, including whether an independent autopsy has been conducted; the nature of medication that FJ had received to deal with sleeping problems and who prescribed it; detention conditions in the immigration holding centre; specific contacts between Canadian officials and FJ while detained in Al Roj prison camp and Türkiye; what FJ may have been told about possible criminal charges against her in Canada or the USA (and whether she was informed of her right to counsel during such questioning); any contacts between Türkiye and Canada following her detention; the legal basis for denying her repatriation with her children (and how that squared with Canada’s binding obligation under international human rights law to ensure the best interests of the children); and how the refusal to bring her home reconciled with an RCMP briefing document that advised, “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees Canadian citizens the right to return to Canada. Therefore, even if a Canadian engaged in terrorist activity abroad, the government of Canada must facilitate their return to Canada.”
“Will my son be next?”
On October 25, Sally Lane, the mother of the longest held Canadian detainee in Northeast Syria, Jack Letts, held a vigil at the entrance to the Global Affairs building in downtown Ottawa, where she laid flowers at a makeshift memorial with a sign that read, “In memory of FJ, with prayers for her and her six orphaned children. FJ’s blood is on the hands of Canadian officials. We need an independent inquiry now and immediate repatriation of all remaining detainees.”
Lane also delivered a letter of her own as a gaggle of security warily warned her against placing flowers on the property.
“We have warned for years that a Canadian will die while this government comes up with one pathetic excuse after another to avoid its clear responsibility to bring our loved ones home,” Lane told a GAC staff member who came out to receive her envelope. “Will my son be next? Do you know what it is like to live with that fear for almost 8 years? Everyone detained has been clear: if you have concerns about them, bring them home, end their cruel arbitrary detention, and charge them in a fair and open judicial proceeding. Leaving them there to rot and die because you’re afraid that the monster you have made them out to be is in fact someone who may not have done anything wrong, is a complete abdication of your legal obligations.”
The Supreme Court of Canada refused to consider a hearing on her son’s case and that of three other male detainees in November 2023. Their legal team’s rare application for reconsideration was submitted in March, 2024 with an urgent plea for an expedited hearing. Last Friday, November 1, the Supreme Court declined once again. Lane declared the decision not to hold a hearing meant “The Supreme Court has just callously signed my son's death warrant," adding, “I expect this government not to care about human rights since all they care about is popularity in the next election, but for the Supreme Court not to care either is gutting and actually unbelievable."
F.J. was buried last week. Following her funeral, Green Party MP Elizabeth May asked if the Liberals would commit to an independent investigation and repatriation for the remaining detainees.
Joly’s Parliamentary Secretary, Rob Oliphant, offered a boilerplate non-response, declaring his thoughts are with “children who have already endured so much in this situation.” He noted that this situation would be treated with the “utmost seriousness and the sense of urgency it absolutely deserves,” but declined to give further details. Asked a similar question during an unrelated media conference the following day, Joly told reporters, “We absolutely need to shed light on what happened… Her six children are in Canada. We owe them the truth and, not only that, we owe them support. And so they can personally count on me to make sure that that is a priority of mine and of my team."
Joly failed to outline how the search for truth will ensue. Meanwhile, significant questions remain about whether Canada will appoint an independent investigator, and if officials will be sufficiently haunted by this tragic outcome to heed the calls of international human rights organizations, the United Nations, the US State Department, and a Parliamentary committee to end the exile of its remaining detained citizens in Northeast Syria.
(An edited version of this piece will appear in The Breach)
