By Canadian Press

Families of Canadians trapped in Syria turn to Federal Court to force government help

Sep 30, 2021 | 10:22 AM

OTTAWA — The families of Canadians trapped in northern Syria are asking the Federal Court to force Ottawa to help them.

The 11 families say in a court filing that the government’s refusal to step in amounts to breaches of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Citizenship Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, among other statutes.

The application is submitted on behalf of several Canadians with relatives, including more than a dozen children, trapped in Syria, and calls on the court to order the government to take “all reasonable steps” to repatriate them.

The trapped Canadians are among the estimated thousands of foreign nationals held in camps in northern Syria by Kurdish forces that won back the war-torn region from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The Kurds suspected many of them of being ISIL sympathizers, but the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and the organization Human Rights Watch say they are innocent victims caught up in Syria’s civil war and have denounced the Canadian government for not repatriating them, as some European countries have done with their citizens.

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Last year, the Canadian government repatriated a five-year-old orphaned girl but Ottawa has not committed to helping more of the trapped Canadians return.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2021.

The Canadian Press