Canada rejects to repatriate two patients held in northeast Syria

Canada is effectively preventing a Canadian woman and a young Canadian child detained in northeast Syria from coming home for life-saving medical care despite a Canadian policy allowing them to do so, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said today.

That policy allows Canada to repatriate nationals held in northeast Syria as Islamic State (ISIS) suspects and family members if they have potentially fatal medical conditions that cannot be treated in the camps and prisons where they are held, it added.

A former US ambassador who has taken several foreigners out of northeast Syria on behalf of their home countries told Human Rights Watch that in days of exchanges ending on February 15, 2022, Canadian authorities refused his offer to escort the woman and child to a Canadian consulate in neighboring Iraq, HRW said.

The families of the two Canadians, who are not related, have repeatedly implored government authorities to repatriate the woman and child and have sent them medical records attesting to their need for life-saving care, according the HRW.

The Kurdish-led authorities in northeast Syria detaining the Canadians and other foreigners have repeatedly urged home countries to repatriate their nationals, HRW said.

Canada has only allowed three of the detained nationals to come home, a 5-year-old orphaned girl in 2020, a 4-year-old girl in March 2021 and, eight months later, the second girl’s mother, whom it only provided emergency travel documents after a lawyer took the case to court. Canada has said that repatriating its nationals could pose a security risk and that it is too dangerous for its diplomats to travel inside war-torn northeast Syria to extract them.