Five Canadians returning from Syria after missing initial repatriation flight, lawyer says

Two Canadian women and three teenage girls who were supposed to be on a repatriation flight from Syria in April are now on their way to Canada, their lawyer says.

The five are part of a group of 19 Canadian women and children who were being held in Kurdish-run camps for family members of ISIS suspects in northeastern Syria.

In January, the government agreed to repatriate the 19 Canadians, but only 14 made it on the April repatriation flight. It was later revealed that the two women and three teenagers who didn’t make the flight were being detained and mistreated by their Kurdish guards at the time, instead of being taken to their pick-up point.

Their lawyer Lawerence Greenspon told CBC that the five Canadians are now on their way back to Canada.

“The families of the returning Canadians are overjoyed with the return of their loved ones,” he said in an email.

CBC has asked Global Affairs Canada for a statement but didn’t receive a response by publication time.

The Canadians are among many foreign nationals who have been held in Syrian detention camps for suspected ISIS members and their families. The camps were established by the Kurdish forces which reclaimed the war-torn region from the extremist group.

The 19 women and children the government agreed to repatriate were part of a lawsuit brought forward by their family members. The families argued that the government’s refusal to repatriate their loved ones violated their charter rights.

While the government reached an agreement to repatriate the women and children, it still refused to repatriate four men that were part of the same lawsuit.

In May, three appeal court judges overturned a lower court’s ruling that the government must repatriate the four men.

Lawyers for the families of the four men said they are considering appealing the decision to the Supreme Court.

The RCMP arrested three of the women who returned to Canada in April. They were later released from custody on terrorism peace bonds.

A terrorism peace bond allows a judge to order a defendant to maintain good behaviour — sometimes with conditions such as a curfew — or face a prison sentence.