Canada announced on Wednesday (October 26th) that it had repatriated two women and two children detained in camps in northeastern Syria, and charged one of them with offenses related to jihadism.
The move follows years of pressure on the government, which has long refused, for security reasons, to repatriate some 50 Canadians believed to be held in camps for relatives of suspected Islamic State (IS) fighters, according to Human Rights Watch.
If the last four are included, only seven of them have returned to the country.
Oumaima Chouay, 27, was arrested upon arriving in Montreal on Tuesday night, according to federal police, while her two Syrian-born children were taken into the care of Quebec authorities who are trying to join their family in Canada. .
Oumaima Chouay, who has been under investigation since 2014, faces four charges, including leaving Canada to join a terrorist group and participating in its activities.
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western dilemma
The young woman was taken prisoner by the Syrian Democratic Forces in November 2017 and detained in the al-Roj camp, police said.
The second female returnee, Kimberly Polman, 50, had also been detained at the camp for three years.
She had been arrested by Kurdish forces in 2019 for traveling to Syria four years earlier and marrying an IS fighter, which she later publicly said she regretted.
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In poor health, Kimberly Polman was briefly detained when she landed on Wednesday morning and then released, her lawyer told AFP.
Western countries face a dilemma over the treatment of their citizens detained in Syria since the end of their military operations against the Islamic State group in that country.
Last week, France repatriated fifteen women and forty children detained in camps under Kurdish control.
In 2020, Ottawa had already repatriated a five-year-old orphan girl, after her uncle took legal action against the Canadian government.
Another child and his mother would also have been repatriated in 2021. Declining to comment officially, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau nevertheless replied to reporters that “
traveling for the purpose of supporting terrorism is a crime in Canada and anyone who has traveled for the purpose of supporting terrorism should face criminal charges
”.
