Terrorism-related offenses | Charges for a mother repatriated from Syria with her children

A Montrealer who left the country in 2014 to join jihadists from the Islamic State armed group in the Middle East will be charged with a series of terrorism-related offenses following a delicate repatriation operation, learned The Press. 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.

Vincent Larouche
The Press

Gabrielle Duchaine
The Press

For Oumaima Chouay, a former resident of Pierrefonds, it’s the end of a long trip to hell. The Montrealer was to return to the country between Tuesday and Wednesday, according to the plans of the authorities. It has been a long time since she set foot in Quebec. She was barely out of her teens in 2014 when she left her family 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, many 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 Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Integrated National Security Team pointed out that several investigations had been opened into these “high-risk travelers” from of 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.

“Horrible” acts

During the years that Oumaima Chouay spent at the heart of the “caliphate” of the Islamic State organization, the group multiplied tortures, beheadings, massacres and persecutions. The head of the team of UN investigators charged with shedding light on them said that the crimes committed by the jihadists constituted “some of the most horrific acts that we have seen in recent history”.

However, there is no indication that the Montrealer has gained 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” by an international coalition in which Canada participated, Oumaima Chouay found herself in a detention camp in Syria, 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.

Oumaima Chouay was to return to the country on an American plane, accompanied by Kimberly Polman, a former resident of Vancouver who had also joined the jihadist group several years ago.

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 Department of Youth Protection and experts from the health network has been set up to prepare 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 D^D Rousseau in 2019.

always a hazard

Phil Gurski, a former analyst with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), believes that Canadians who voluntarily joined a group as violent and extremist as the Islamic State group must be brought to justice and separated from their children as soon as they are born. Come back to the country.

“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.

The Islamic State organization may have lost the immense territory it controlled in Syria and Iraq, but 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 said.

Last week, France repatriated 15 women and 40 children who were held in prison camps in northeast Syria. The minors were entrusted to the child welfare services while the adults were handed over to the judicial authorities, according to a press release from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. France had repatriated mothers and children in the past, but the European Court of Human Rights later blamed Paris for failing to properly consider certain repatriation requests from people who remained in the camps.

Canadian reluctance

Other countries, such as Germany and Belgium, repatriated many citizens who had been captured abroad after joining the Islamic State armed group. Canada, on the other hand, has been reluctant to follow them. In 2019, a report by the NGO Human Rights Watch blamed Ottawa for having abandoned its nationals because of their links with the jihadist group.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had stressed that the government did not want to put its employees in danger as part of such a mission. “We have a responsibility as a government to ensure that Canadians, especially our employees, are not put at risk. Syria is a place where we have no diplomats or representation,” he said.

A Canadian judicial source had also pointed out to The Press, on condition of anonymity, that the authorities wanted to ensure that they could file criminal charges before repatriating a former collaborator of a terrorist group.

With the collaboration of Daniel Renaud, The Press