In north-east Syria, an estimated 56,000 people face mass human rights violations and inhumane conditions in detention.

Following the Supreme Court of Canada’s mid-November refusal to hear the appeal of four Canadian men arbitrarily detained for up to 7 years under dire conditions in Northeast Syria, their families and legal team are taking the rare step of seeking a reconsideration and full hearing before the country’s highest court.

In a hugely disappointing decision, the Supreme Court of Canada has refused to hear the critical case of four men who have been arbitrarily detained without charge under conditions akin to torture – one for almost seven years – in northeast Syria. Canada’s refusal to assist them has perpetuated their exile.

Syria: Canadian delegation meets Jack Letts and other detainees held in camps.

Letts' mother describes 'massive relief' on learning her son is still alive as delegation calls for immediate repatriations from camps and prisons

Group says it hopes government will turn it into a repatriation delegation.

Supporters help to spread the word about an injustice that needs to be remedied as soon as possible.

Excerpt:

Eventually securing a meeting with the Foreign Office in June 2017 – after screaming uncontrollably down their ‘emergency’ phone line – I asked the Head of Special Cases how he would feel if it was his own son. ‘I can see that it is very distressing for you,’ he said. ‘And how would you feel if it was your own son, and you were faced with someone like you?’ I pursued. ‘At least you would know you had done all you could do,’ was his reply.

The Head of Special Cases was wrong. We were nowhere near saying we had done all we could do. Our battle for justice for Jack had only just begun.

In a ruling on January 20, 2023, Federal Court Justice Henry Brown effectively directed Ottawa to request repatriation of the men as soon as reasonably possible and provide them with passports or emergency travel documents.

Article provides a status on Canadian citizens currently abandoned to arbitrary detention in Syria. Also summarized is the Canadian government's stance on repatriations, including their shocking policy about-face that took place in 2018.

Letter from UN to Canadian Government states:
“There is allegedly no legal basis, no judicial authorisation, review, control, or oversight of Jack Letts' detention which entirely lacks in predictability and due process of law.”

The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG) hosted a panel on June 23rd, 2022, calling on the Canadian government to repatriate 44 citizens being held in indefinite, life threatening detention in Northeastern Syria.

His story reveals an idealistic, compassionate young man of 18 whose 2014 decision to go to Syria to help end the suffering of its people made him an easy target for the Global War On Terror (GWOT) propaganda machine that accuses without evidence, detains without charge, assigns inaccurate and damaging labels, tortures with impunity, condemns by association, and relies on broad definitions of alleged threats to get away with crimes that violate the most basic human rights guaranteed by the so-called “rules-based international order.”

Yesterday, the RCMP received an official complaint against Kurdish authorities for the torture of Canadian citizen Jack Letts.

Jack Letts: “He described to the official being locked for 35 days in a cell slightly taller than him and about half that long, with no windows or toilet.

“In solitary confinement I started to go insane and talk to myself,” Letts said of the experience. “I thought dying was better than my mother seeing me insane so I tried to hang myself.”

John Letts, the father of a Canadian, Jack, detained in Syria for almost 5 years without charge, is in Ottawa this week meeting with Members of Parliament and journalists in order to push the government to repatriate his son.

John Letts says he's on a mission to save his son Jack's life, but also to change the way people think about him.

John Letts is pushing the federal government to bring his son to Canada from Syria, where he has been languishing in a Kurdish prison for almost five years.

The parents of a Canadian man who has been held in a detention centre in northeastern Syria since 2017 are once again calling on the Canadian federal government for help to repatriate their son.

A Canadian woman who spent two years in Syrian prison camps, now stranded in northern Iraq, wants a judge to compel Ottawa to give her an emergency passport so she can return home.

Families of the 26 Canadian citizens (14 children, 8 women, 4 men) currently detained in Syria have filed a federal claim against the Canadian government in Ottowa. This case seeks to bring to light the neglect of the Canadian government to uphold parts of the Federal Court Act, the Citizenship Act, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, in relation to repatriating these Canadian citizens out of the horrific conditions in Syria.