OTTAWA — The federal government has rebuffed an offer from a civil society delegation to travel to northeastern Syria on Ottawa's behalf to repatriate detained Canadians.
Instead, a scaled-down group, including Sen. Kim Pate, intends to head to the region in late August to gather information about Canadians held in squalid camps and prisons.
The delegation is also to include Alex Neve, former secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, and Scott Heatherington, a retired Canadian diplomat.
Pate told a news conference Thursday it is "quite simply astounding" that Canadians have been arbitrarily held for years in appalling conditions when their own government "appears to hold the key to their return."
Late last month, the Federal Court of Appeal overturned a judge's declaration that four Canadian men being held in Syrian camps are entitled to Ottawa's help to come home.
The May ruling set aside a January decision by Federal Court Justice Henry Brown, who directed Ottawa to request repatriation of the men as soon as reasonably possible and provide them with passports or emergency travel documents.
The Canadians are among the many foreign nationals in Syrian camps and jails run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the strife-torn region from the extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
On April 19, Sally Lane — mother of Jack Letts, one of the four Canadian men — wrote to Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly requesting that she promptly authorize a seven-member delegation to Syria in late May.
"I am convinced that in the current circumstances, authorizing this delegation is essential to saving Jack’s life and protecting the rights of all Canadian detainees," Lane wrote. "As such, I will be a member of this delegation."
Letts became a devoted Muslim, went on holiday to Jordan at 18, then studied in Kuwait before winding up in Syria. His family says he was captured by Kurdish forces while fleeing the country with a group of refugees in 2017.
In an interview, Lane said the government declined to provide support to the Canadian delegation. "They didn't actually give a reason. All they said was that repatriation will be done by government members only."
Given that the revamped mission set for August will be more of a fact-finding trip, Lane has now decided not to go.
"It's not actually going to be a repatriation trip," she said. "I mean, it's going to be preparatory to repatriation, but there won't actually be any people coming back. And I just thought, I can't face the idea of seeing Jack and leaving him there. I just think it would kind of break me, and I believe it would break him. So I'm not going on this trip."
Asked why the government would not support the proposed delegation, Global Affairs Canada spokesman Jean-Pierre Godbout said Ottawa advises against all travel to Syria.
"Due to privacy and operational security considerations, we cannot comment on specific cases or potential future actions," he added.
The identities and circumstances of the other three Canadian men are not publicly known.
Amid the court proceedings, lawyer Lawrence Greenspon reached an agreement with the federal government earlier this year to bring home six Canadian women and 13 children from Syria who had initially been part of the legal action.
Neve said in an interview that the government's "seemingly implacable refusal" to assist the return of the men to Canada "is in our view, frankly, disgraceful."
The delegation, which could also include human-rights lawyers, plans to fly to Mosul, in northern Iraq, then travel overland to northeastern Syria.
The members hope to speak with as many of the Canadians — men, women and children — in the camps and detention centres as possible, said Neve, a senior fellow with the graduate school of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa.
"We want to see about their welfare, we want to see what human rights concerns they may be facing," he said. "So from that side of things, it's a welfare and humanitarian mission, really."
But the delegation also wants to meet with local officials to see if steps can be taken to help facilitate the release of Canadians, Neve added.
Canadian government officials should be playing that role, as they have with some of the women and children brought home from Syria, he said.
"Many other countries have much more actively been involved in facilitating and carrying out the repatriation of their nationals, so Canada continues to very notably be a laggard in the international community," Neve said.
"And I think that's disappointing, especially for a country like Canada that that proudly asserts that we believe in human rights."
Neve said if any of the Canadians being held in Syria pose a security concern, those issues can be dealt with through the justice system. But leaving citizens to languish overseas for years on end "is simply not acceptable."
Lane told the news conference she has been trying to convince Canadian authorities to allow her son to tell his side of the story. "And that is what is being denied, and that is what I simply do not understand."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2023.
Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press
