Six children, not including their Canadian mother, will be repatriated to Canada from a Syrian concentration camp.
Lawyer Lawrence Greenspon, who is representing the mother, said Global Affairs Canada plans to return the children, who are between five and 12 years old.
He said the government is working with the Montreal Polarization Clinic, which supports families affected by radicalization. The clinic will take in children who have no family in Montreal, and will likely be placed in foster care if their mothers do not return to the country.
Greenspon said the mother is currently out of camp and wants to return to Canada to be with her children.
“Perhaps her intention is to find her way home,” he said.
Greenspawn said the federal government is refusing to repatriate the woman because authorities believe she poses a security risk, and her identity has not been made public.
He said the government has taken steps to address that risk, including repatriating other Canadian women from camps in Syria and placing them on terrorist peace bonds.
The family is one of many foreign nationals in camps and prisons in Syria run by Kurdish forces that have retaken war-torn areas from the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria.
The federal government decided not to facilitate the woman’s return, but provided repatriation assistance to her six children, who she said either sent them to Canada on her own or to the squalid Al Roy camp. I was forced to decide whether to leave my children.
Greenspon said the mother was “given an impossible choice.”
Although it is not yet determined when the children will arrive in Canada, Greenspon said he is optimistic the government will “move quickly to bring them home safely.”
