OTTAWA — Advocates want Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly to call an impartial investigation into the death of a Canadian woman the federal government refused to repatriate from a Syrian detention camp.
In a letter to Joly, Sen. Kim Pate, human rights activist Alex Neve and lawyer Hadayt Nazami say the Quebec woman died unexpectedly just over a week ago in Turkey.
Pate, Neve and Nazami were part of a delegation that met the woman and her six young children in August 2023 in a Syrian camp run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-torn region from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The federal government offered to help the children come to Canada, but refused to repatriate the woman, who is publicly known only as F.J.
Lawyer Lawrence Greenspon, who has assisted the family, says Ottawa cited security grounds in declining to help the mother return. As a result, F.J. was left with the choice of sending the children on their own to Canada or keeping them with her in the squalid camp.
The Oct. 24 letter to Joly says the woman escaped from al-Roj camp in northeastern Syria, entered Turkey in March, and was apprehended and imprisoned by Turkish authorities three months later.
"The circumstances leading up to and surrounding her death give rise to a number of troubling questions," the letter says.
"We are therefore calling on the Canadian government to take immediate steps to launch an independent, impartial investigation into the death of F.J., by someone with appropriate expertise to fully interrogate the circumstances of her confinement and death."
Federal officials took steps to help bring the six children to Canada in May. They are now in foster care.
In an interview, Greenspon supported the calls from delegation members for an inquiry.
"Those questions need to be answered," he said Friday. "It is a tragedy that should never have happened."
Joly's office did not immediately comment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 25, 2024.
Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press
