Six children, but not their Canadian mother, will be repatriated to Canada from a detention camp in Syria.
Lawyer Lawrence Greenspon, who represents the mother, said Global Affairs Canada plans to return the children, aged five to 12.
He said the government is working with the Polarization clinic in Montreal, which supports families affected by radicalization. The clinic will welcome children who do not have family in Montreal and who will likely be placed in foster care if the mother is not back in the country.
Mr. Greenspon said the mother is now out of the camp and wants to return to Canada to be with her children. “Presumably his intention is to find his way back,” he said.
The federal government has refused to repatriate the woman, whose identity is not public, because authorities believe she poses a security risk, according to Greenspon.
He said the government had repatriated other Canadian women from Syrian detention camps and had put in place measures to deal with this risk, such as placing them on peace bonds.
The family is among numerous foreign nationals held in Syrian prisons and camps run by Kurdish forces who have retaken the war-torn region from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Although the federal government decided not to facilitate the woman’s return, it offered repatriation assistance to her six children, leaving the woman with the choice of sending the children to Canada on her own or keeping them with her in the sordid al-Roj camp.
Mr. Greenspon argued that “the mother had an impossible choice.”
No date has been set for the children’s arrival in Canada, but Greenspon said he is optimistic about the government’s ability to “act quickly to bring the children home safely.”