It’s the end of a long journey to hell. The Press learned that Canada is currently repatriating a Montrealer who left in 2014 to join the jihadists of the Islamic State group in the Middle East. The woman should be charged with terrorism-related offences. His two children born overseas, who have so far known only war, detention camps and Islamist tyranny, will be entitled to a new start in Quebec.
Posted at 5:03 p.m.
The Montrealer was barely out of her teens in 2014 when she left her family in Montreal to voluntarily plunge into the war that was tearing Syria and Iraq apart. According to what her relatives have told several people over the years, she watched a large amount of war videos on the Internet and was very concerned about the suffering of the Syrian population.
Coming from a family that was not fundamentalist, she seemed to have adopted a radical interpretation of Islam before her departure, again according to what her relatives told the workers who helped the family.
At the time, several Canadians had responded to the call of the armed group Islamic State (Daesh) which invited its sympathizers to emigrate to join its ranks. In a sworn statement filed at the Montreal courthouse, an investigator from the RCMP’s Integrated National Security Team pointed out that several investigations had been opened into these “high-risk travelers” from 2013.
“The combat experience they have acquired as well as their allegiance to terrorist entities could pose a direct threat to the national security of Canada,” wrote the investigator, Rudin Gjoka.
In a camp for years
Nothing indicates that the Montrealer who is on her way to return to the country has acquired combat experience. According to our information, she quickly showed after her arrival in the Middle East a disenchantment with the activists she met.
After the birth of her two children and the destruction of the caliphate erected by the Islamic State group, the Canadian found herself in a detention camp, where she languished for years. Until Canadian officials agree to bring her back.
Before doing so, specialized RCMP investigators submitted an extensive file to crown prosecutors, according to our sources, so that the traveler had to answer for her actions. She should face several criminal charges, according to our information. In Canada, it is illegal to leave the country to join a terrorist entity and to facilitate terrorist activities. The law provides for a maximum penalty of ten years in prison for each of these offences.
The woman should land in Montreal shortly with another Canadian from another province.
Medical intervention
The care of children who lived in the territory controlled by the jihadists and in the detention camps thereafter has been planned for a long time in Montreal. A committee bringing together the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the youth protection department and experts from the health network has been set up to plan for their return to the country. “Everything has been planned. We’re not improvising,” explained child psychiatrist Cécile Rousseau, member of the committee, in an interview with The Press in 2019. Already at the time, his team said they were ready to go to the airport “anytime”.
The fate of the children will be at the heart of the intervention. “They come from a war zone and from camps where the physical and hygienic conditions are very poor. We know that we will have to mobilize players in physical health, infectious diseases, nutrition and development. We expect to have people who are in poor physical condition, “said the DD Rousseau in 2019.
Always a threat
Phil Gurski, a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) analyst who studies terrorism, says Canadians who have voluntarily joined such a violent and extremist group as the Islamic State should be brought to justice and separated from their children as soon as possible. their return home.
“Some women use their children to try to get more favorable treatment. They say they have to come home for the good of the child. They present themselves as victims, who have not really participated in the wrongdoing. However, they voluntarily joined a terrorist group. The children did not choose anything. It is the same as any criminal in Canada. There are mechanisms to take their children away from them. They should be entrusted to the extended family if possible, and if not to social services,” he believes.
The Islamic State may have lost the immense territory it controlled in Syria and Iraq, it remains active and still considers Canada an enemy, underlines the analyst. “100% they are still a threat. They are active, they carry out attacks in several countries and several other groups inspired by them have been born in different regions,” he says.
With the collaboration of Daniel Renaud, The Press