A Canadian mother of six who was deemed a security risk and refused permission to come home by the federal government has died suddenly in Turkey, her lawyer says.
Lawrence Greenspon said he’s been told his client was found dead in a cell in a Turkish immigration centre sometime during the night of Oct. 16-17.
The 40-year-old woman, known publicly by her initials F.J., was trying to get herself home to Canada and had somehow managed to escape a detention camp in northeastern Syria for ISIS suspects and their families, Greenspon said.
“This was a wholly unnecessary tragedy that occurred,” he told CBC News. “I have no doubt it’s the end result of an incredibly un-humanitarian policy by Global Affairs Canada.
“I have no doubt that if she had been repatriated with her children that she would still be alive today.”
Global Affairs did not respond to that claim, but did say Canadian officials are in contact with local authorities and can’t share more information due to privacy concerns.
Two other Canadian lawyers and a senator have sent a letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly calling on the federal government to call for an independent investigation into a death they say has given rise “to a number of troubling questions.”
In May, the federal government repatriated the woman’s four boys and two girls from al-Roj in northeastern Syria, where F.J. had been held for five years.
She wasn’t allowed to join her children on the repatriation flight to Canada, Greenspon said, because the federal government said it didn’t have the “ability to manage her behaviour once she gets back to Canada.”
Greenspon said he had been challenging the government’s refusal to repatriate the woman through a judicial review in Federal Court. He argued that Ottawa had not presented “a genuine excuse for not bringing her home” since eight other women had been repatriated from the same camp in al-Roj, and some had been managed through terrorism peace bonds.
“So for GAC to say she’s a security risk and we can’t manage her behaviour is nonsense,” he said.
Former CSIS analyst Phil Gurski disagrees. He said the federal government has to task about 40 people to manage a potential threat through online monitoring, surveillance and intelligence from allies.
“So the more people we repatriate means a real strain on resources for the RCMP and CSIS,” he said.
Gurski said the fact the government chose not to repatriate this person suggests to him that CSIS or the RCMP had information indicating she could have been capable of carrying out an attack in Canada, or was radicalized and could influence people here. Greenspon said he is not aware of any such allegations against his client.
The federal government has agreed to repatriate 19 Canadian women and children held in Syrian detention camps for suspected ISIS members and their families.
That judicial review ended, Greenspon said, when the woman escaped the camp and fled to Turkey in an attempt to obtain emergency travel documents and get back to Canada.
Greenspon said F.J. was arrested in Turkey in June and charged with being a member of a terrorism group. He said she was acquitted in a criminal hearing on Oct. 15 in Turkey and was transferred to an immigration holding centre, where she was later found dead.
“It makes no sense at all that after a successful trial result on the 15th, that she’s dead within 48 hours of that decision. It makes no sense at all,” said Greenspon, who is calling for an autopsy.
CBC News is not naming F.J. to protect the identity of her six children, all of whom are minors living with a foster family in Quebec. CTV News first reported her death. The woman’s children and her mother in Tunisia have been notified, Greenspon said.
International human rights lawyer Alex Neve called her death “absolutely heartbreaking.”
“To know that those six children have now forever been robbed of their mother, who was obviously an essential person in their lives, and to also know at the same time that this could have been avoided,” said Neve, an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa and Dalhousie University.
As word spreads in the al-Roj Syrian detention camp for families of ISIS fighters that a four-year-old Canadian girl was freed, other mothers grapple with sending their own children to safety. Some say they couldn’t survive without them, while others beg Canada to bring them to safety.
Neve was part of a delegation that traveled to al-Roj in August 2023 and met with F.J. and her children. The delegation was “struck at the time,” Neve said, by how close the children were with each other and with their mother.
He has called on the government to repatriate all Canadians detained in northeastern Syria. He said that if there’s evidence against those detained, they should be charged and tried in Canada, not exiled abroad.
Neve said there are now serious questions about F.J.’s death. He and Sen. Kim Pate are calling for an independent investigation.
The letter says they were told F.J. was having trouble sleeping and was being given “a sedative and other medication to help with that problem,” and that her lawyer in Turkey was the one who found her body.
The letter’s authors also said they were told by Turkish officials that they had concluded the cause of her death was a heart attack, but they didn’t believe an autopsy had been conducted. The letter said F.J. recently had surgery for anal fissures in Turkey, but those who visited the prison said there was no indication she was in poor health.
“Suddenly a 40-year-old otherwise healthy woman suddenly dies unexpectedly from a heart attack in the middle of the night. That’s concerning,” Neve said.
CBC News asked Joly’s office and Global Affairs Canada if they would support an investigation but has not yet received an answer.
Gurski said Canadians who went to Syria and joined ISIS should not be treated as victims because it’s a “heinous terrorist group that engaged in mass rapes, killings, and beheadings.”
“The only victims are the people who suffered under the ISIS regime during the so-called caliphate,” he said. “The victims of ISIS are in Iraq and Syria, including the Yazidis whom ISIS wanted to eliminate in totality.”
Survivors of the Yazidi genocide, one of the worst atrocities of the 21st century at the hands of the Islamic State, say they feel heartbroken over Ottawa’s decision to repatriate Canadians held in Syrian detention camps for suspected ISIS members and their families.
