A photo of Jack Letts and Kimberly Polman prior to their detention in Syria.
A photo of Jack Letts and Kimberly Polman prior to their detention in Syria.

In a stinging critique of the Trudeau government’s complicity in the arbitrary detention in northeast Syria of 44 Canadian Muslim men, women and children, a group of United Nations Special Rapporteurs has called on Ottawa to stop violating international law and to repatriate all of its citizens.

In addition, the Rapporteurs also slammed Canadian support for and investment in the very infrastructure of arbitrary detention which holds these eight Canadian men, 13 women and 23 children under conditions tantamount to torture. They are among tens of thousands of other foreign nationals who traveled to the region for a wide variety of reasons in the 2010s.

Given Ottawa’s intentional effort to prevent their return, one could name the archipelago of Syrian camps and prisons for what they are: Canada’s Guantanamo Bay, a torturous world of indefinite detention for Muslim-Canadian citizens who, to serve the political and state security agenda of Canada’s “intelligence” apparatus, have been left to die.

The UN report, released in late August 2022, focuses on one of the longest held detainees, 26-year-old Canadian Jack Letts, who as a teenager went to Syria as a humanitarian volunteer during the Arab Spring uprising against the brutal Assad regime. Despite his public opposition to the Daesh (aka ISIS) occupiers of a significant swath of Syria and Iraq, Letts wound up detained, tortured by proxy via questions from the UK, and libeled in a relentless media campaign built around Islamophobic tropes and information gleaned from that torture.

The UN’s broadside is the latest in a lengthy series of studies documenting serious human rights violations imposed on tens of thousands of people arbitrarily detained by the Kurdish Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES or Rojava), a Canadian ally in the war against Daesh.

While Canada refuses to assist its illegally held citizens, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Netherlands, Albania, France, USA, UK, Germany, Iraq and Russia have repatriated at least some of their citizens. Ironically, Canada itself is spending $2.9 million to repatriate Iraqi citizens at the same time it’s forced families of the Canadian detainees into Federal Court this November seeking an order for repatriation.

Canada’s shocking about face

With the US State Department, United Nations, International Committee of the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, Save the Children, an all-party committee of Canadian Parliamentarians – not to mention the Kurdish captors themselves – all calling for repatriation, why has Canada chosen to look the other way from this clear humanitarian crisis?

An affidavit connected to the upcoming court case reveals Canada underwent a serious about-face in 2018, described in a sworn statement of British MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle who, along with high-ranking British Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, travelled to the camps that year.

“I learnt from those officials at the DFNS [Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, which holds the detainees] that there had been extensive discussions between Canadians and the DFNS officials,” Russell-Moyle testified.  “The DFNS and the Canadians together had taken steps  towards the repatriation of all the Canadians ….  They were, the DFNS understood, only about ‘a week from the Canadians going home’. I was informed there was a ‘Heads of Terms’ document between the Canadians and the DFNS about how that transfer would be completed. I asked for copies of this document. To the consternation of the DFNS officials, the official Canadian interest in repatriating their nationals, including their children, suddenly went cold without explanation and the DFNS felt they could not share further documentation with me regarding this case. Whilst I have no confirmation of this fact from the British government, it was my understanding that this happened as a result of British intervention with the Canadian  government.”

That conclusion appears to dovetail with comments in a landmark report by Human Rights Watch: Kurdish foreign affairs official Abdulkarim Omar shared that Canada was the first country to be in touch regarding repatriation back in 2018. In a 2020 interview, Omar told the human rights group that Canada “sent us application forms and travel document papers. Canadians [detained in northeast Syria] filled out all of it and we sent back scanned versions. We got to the point of them coming to pick up their citizens, then everything stopped. We don’t know why. This was two years ago. … We would love a meeting with Canada on this issue.”

Pawns in spy games?

While it is unclear why Canada would go from being within a week of repatriation to four subsequent years of refusing to assist the detainees, recent headlines reviving a 2015 story about the role of a Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) operative in trafficking young British Muslim girls to the Syrian war zone could provide one explanation.

Justin Trudeau defended the CSIS child trafficking as “creative” and “flexible,” but declined to comment on another revelation: CSIS withheld its role in trafficking the British girls from UK authorities, and “It was only after [the CSIS operative] was arrested, and they feared this could become public that the Canadians made a move and notified the British authorities.”

A new book highlighting the scandal notes CSIS also made representations to the Turkish regime, apologizing for running a trafficking operation on Turkish soil without their knowledge and permission. The CSIS operative, who was arrested and detained for several years, has apparently been released and may now be in Canada, a repatriation whose irony is not lost on families of the detainees.

All of this begs a question. Was the price for British forgiveness of and assistance in the cover-up over CSIS trafficking girls to Syria without informing their UK intelligence partners (the cardinal sin not being the trafficking so much as the failure to let their spy brethren know about it) a quid pro quo to keep the Canadian detainees in Syria? Would a Canadian release have undermined British demonization of UK citizens also held in Syrian camps, which they used to justify both stripping of citizenship and the UK’s refusal to repatriate? One of the trafficked girls, Shamima Begum (two of the other girls were subsequently killed), was unjustifiably built up as a monster in the UK press, had her citizenship stripped, and became the public face of a moral panic around a relatively small group of young individuals who either chose (or were lured) to travel to Syria.

Indeed, if Canada’s Prime Minister defends the crime of child trafficking for state security reasons, perhaps his government is also willing to sacrifice the 44 Canadian Muslims to satisfy the Islamophobic imperatives of Canada and the UK’s spy apparatus.

As Begum’s lawyer Tasnime Akunjee pointed out, “the calculation here is that the lives of British children, and the risk of their death, is part of the algorithm of acceptable risk our Western allies have taken.”

While much press coverage of this scandal focuses on the propriety of such spy activity (legalized under the Trudeau government with Bill C-59, but certainly illegal at the time it was committed), there’s been precious little coverage of the camps where so many internationals remain abandoned by their governments.

Urgent repatriation call

It’s in this context that the UN Rapporteurs declared in their Jack Letts appeal that “the urgent, voluntary and human rights compliant repatriation of all the [Canadian] citizens…is the only international law-compliant response to the complex and precarious human rights, humanitarian, and security situation” of the detainees.

The Rapporteurs expressed “serious concern regarding Mr. Letts’ continued detention since 2017 in North-East Syria and his rights to life, security, and physical and mental health due to the dire conditions of detention…[there is] no legal basis, no judicial authorisation, review control, or oversight of his detention which entirely lacks predictability and due process of law.”

They add that they are “extremely concerned” because “it appears that none of the conditions to prevent arbitrary detention – a right so fundamental that it remains applicable even in the most extreme situations – are respected, and that no steps towards terminating or reviewing the legality of the detention have been taken, despite Mr. Letts having been detained for five years, which in practice amounts to the possibility of indefinite detention.”

The report stands in stark contrast to Ottawa’s self-congratulatory rhetoric on arbitrary detention, including its role in organizing a 2021 Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations as a means of upholding “universal values, firmly grounded in international law.” That declaration arose from Canadian government outrage that two white, non-Muslim men were being illegally detained by China, but has not been invoked to condemn the holding of 44 Canadian Muslim men, women and children by Canada’s Kurdish allies. Unlike in the case of the two Michaels, the Kurds have repeatedly begged Canada to take responsibility for and repatriate the 44 Canadians, but Ottawa refuses to budge.

The UN Letts report arrives almost a year after the UN Rapporteurs issued a similarly stark document calling for repatriation of Canadian Kimberly Polman, who had traveled to Syria in 2015 on the understanding she would be providing healthcare for women and children. According to Human Rights Watch, shortly after she arrived in Syria, Polman wanted to get out, but was trapped in an abusive relationship: her husband put her in jail for 10 months as a “disobedient wife.”

Held arbitrarily since January, 2019, Polman’s physical and mental health have undergone serious decline, with untreated hepatitis, kidney inflammation/enlargement, untreated Hashimoto’s disease, bone/muscle challenges, suicide attempts, and post-traumatic stress disorder. A Doctors Without Borders report found her conditions “life-threatening,” and recommended testing and medical care not available in Northeast Syria. During a months-long hunger strike, Polman lost more than half her body weight.

Vulnerable to trafficking

While Polman’s family “has requested on numerous occasions that the Canadian government facilitate the transfer of money for medical supplies, food, and water, [Ottawa] has not facilitated these requests.”

The Rapporteurs expressed concerns that in addition to the denial of Polman’s rights to security and health and not to be subjected to arbitrary detention, “she may be vulnerable to all sorts of abuses and trafficking.” They also reiterated that all countries, including Canada, “have a positive obligation under international law to protect the right of, and repatriate, their nationals.” They added that in Polman’s case, her return is “both a legal and humanitarian imperative….Ms. Polman is experiencing profound infringements on her human rights, we are concerned for her survival and believe that her return to Canada is critical to prevent those specific and identifiable harms.”

On February 10, 2022, 10 UN experts again called for Polman’s repatriation for life-saving medical care. While Global Affairs officials acknowledged in court papers that Polman was eligible for repatriation because of her medical condition, Letta Tayler, Associate Crisis and Conflict Director at Human Rights Watch, pointedly asked: “How close to death do Canadians have to be for their government to decide they qualify for repatriation? Canada should be helping its citizens unlawfully held in northeast Syria, not obstructing their ability to get life-saving health care.”

An unrepentant scofflaw

The cases of Letts, Polman, and the other 42 Canadian men, women and children  detained in Northeast Syria shine a glaring spotlight on Canada’s role as unrepentant international law scofflaw.

In addressing the unending detention of Jack Letts, the Rapporteurs write that, as with the no-exceptions ban on torture, the prohibition on arbitrary detention is a peremptory norm of international treaty and customary law from which no one is ever allowed to derogate. Indeed, “arbitrary deprivation of liberty can never be a necessary or proportionate measure,” and no country can ever claim that “illegal, unjust or unpredictable deprivation of liberty is necessary for the protection of a vital security or other interest proportionate to that end.”

Yet that’s what the Liberals – and, specifically, the Global Affairs Canada (GAC)  bureaucracy – have done with a policy framework that seeks to use unnamed and unsubstantiated threats as an excuse not to fulfill their duty to ensure the return of the Canadian detainees.

The framework’s top priority lists “national security considerations,” and applies those  equally to adults and children under the age of 7. Despite a growing body of case law which proves otherwise, the document declares there is no “positive obligation” on the part of Global Affairs Canada to provide consular assistance or repatriation.

“In practice, the policy has done nothing to facilitate repatriations since its adoption and suggests discriminatory provision of consular assistance,” Human Rights Watch concluded. To add insult to injury, GAC failed to share its framework for a full year with the family members; it only came out through the legal case’s disclosure process.

Even though the life-threatening conditions faced by Kimberly Polman qualified her for repatriation under GAC’s highly restrictive policy, Canada has actively prevented her return, even when a former US diplomat offered to escort her out of the camp.

Subcontracting arbitrary detention

As disturbing as the Canadian government’s failure to repatriate its citizens is its role in subcontracting their suffering via a non-state party, which is consistent with past Canadian practices of subcontracting torture of Canadians Muslims in Cuba’s  Guantanamo Bay, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, and other countries (documented by two judicial inquiries as well as numerous Federal and Supreme Court decisions).

The UN Rapporteurs highlight the fact that the very members of the so-called Global Coalition fighting Daesh are investing in the detention infrastructure that punishes their citizens with conditions described as tantamount to torture and which have no legal basis in law. Indeed, they note “that what is now emerging is capacity building and technical assistance provision supporting such indefinite detention of [Canadian] nationals enabled and supported in part by the Coalition” of which Canada is a member. Indeed, the “entrenchment and protraction of allegedly arbitrary detention in these inhumane condition in North-East Syria … is premised on the direct security assistance provided by the Coalition” to a non-state entity, the Kurdish authorities. In turn, this raises “serious questions of State responsibility and of complicity in the facilitation, sustainment and continuation of the serious human rights violations that are taking place in the prisons and detention centres in North-East Syria.”

The Rapporteur reminds Canada that “States must not render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the serious breach [of international human rights law] and must cooperate to bring it to an end.” They also remind Canada that building and support “for the maintenance of prisons designed to keep these individuals in detention are incompatible” with Canada’s international law obligations, especially the unbreakable commitment prohibiting arbitrary detention.

While the Department of Justice prepares arguments for the upcoming repatriation court case, it is no doubt looking to the French government, which was the subject of a significant European Court of Human Rights decision earlier in September regarding the repatriation of French woman and children. As Un Special Rapporteur Fionnuala Ní Aoláin points out, the decision affirms  “a continuously deteriorating humanitarian situation and a rights-free zone in which thousands of men, women, and children have been arbitrarily detained for the past four years absent any legal basis or review of the legality of their detention. Importantly, the Court’s decision puts to rest myths relating to the impossibility of repatriation for security reasons due to its confirmation that European states have access to the camps and have successfully repatriated individuals in the past. All of this indicates that states do not have a strong legal basis for denying repatriation requests, particularly for vulnerable individuals who have had their fundamental rights violated for far too long.”

In a revealing section of the decision, the French government concedes (in a declaration that sounds like it is Canada’s own policy) that it is fearful that any “humanitarian action might become an obligation for the future.”

Let them eat sand

The case of the Canadian detainees is an open secret in Ottawa, yet apart from two statements by NDP MP Heather McPherson and Green MP Elizabeth May, no one has  raised concern. While Liberal MPs like Sameer Zuberi of the Parliamentary Muslim caucus have staked their turf around the very justified concerns around Uyghur Muslims arbitrarily detained in China, they have consciously chosen silence for their fellow Muslim citizens arbitrarily detained in Syria. There is a crude sense, according to off the record conversations with various community leaders, that none dare touch these 44 Canadians, the ultimate victims of a Good Muslim/Bad Muslim dualism in which Islamophobic electoral politics trump the universality of human rights.

Such silence sustains Canada’s Guantanamo in northeast Syria, where there is no clean water or nutritious food, few diapers or sanitary towels, no medical care, no education and no privacy. There are no playgrounds: children play next to cesspools of human waste, into which some have fallen. Sewage floods flimsy tents while wild dogs roam the camps terrorizing people. Malnutrition is rampant, many have been killed in tent fires, and communicable diseases common to concentration camps like tuberculosis and cholera are a constant threat.

One Canadian child’s nutritional deficiency makes them crave salt and minerals, so they eat sand and dirt. This has been shared with Global Affairs Canada, yet Justin Trudeau, Melanie Joly and Chrystia Freeland behave as if state security requires this child to eat sand and dirt and to die from starvation.

The men’s prisons are packed with bone-thin prisoners, many with amputated limbs. Detainees remain in the same position from 8 a.m. to midnight because there is no room, with one overflowing latrine for 80 detainees.

Instead of ending this nightmare, Canadian government lawyers are preparing arguments to keep 44 Canadian citizens there forever. While a petition in support of repatriation has almost 11,000 signatures, it will take more voices to turn the tide of this humanitarian catastrophe.

In September 2021, Kimberly Polman wrote a letter describing her plight. “I am continually bleeding,” she wrote. “My teeth are all broken…my legs cannot walk or stand… I am dying a slow death here and I have done everything I can think of to get help. Nothing has worked.”

In a previous letter, Polman also asked a question that can only be answered by people of conscience willing to take a stand and demand immediate repatriation: “We survived ISIS, we were the lucky ones. … But can we survive the camps?”

Photo of Matthew Behrens

Matthew Behrens

Matthew Behrens is a freelance writer and social justice advocate.