The children of a Canadian woman deemed a national security risk have been freed from a detention camp in Syria for captured ISIS members and are now in Canada.
“They’re back,” family lawyer Lawrence Greenspon told Global News.
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One memo states RCMP were unable to charge the woman, only referred to as “F.J.,” or restrict her movements with a peace bond and so she “would have freedom of movement upon return to Canada.”
The memos show F.J. was likely motivated to return to Canada to “secure a better quality of life and future for her children.” Ottawa had offered to bring back only F.J.’s children because she did not qualify for assistance under the government’s policy on ISIS detainees.
Threat assessments found she held “extremist ideological beliefs,” and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has warned what it calls Canadian Extremist Travellers can pose “a national security risk.”
“Despite the information above, the RCMP does not have sufficient evidence at this time to support section 83 Criminal Code (terrorism) charges or a section 810.011 peace bond,” one of the memos states.
F.J. is the last of nine Canadian women the federal government has not yet repatriated. Two of the others, Oumaima Chouay and Ammara Amjad, face terrorism charges.
The Public Prosecution Service of Canada previously told Global News hearings were scheduled to determine whether peace bonds, which impose restrictions for the sake of public safety, should be applied to three returnees in Edmonton.
Two others are under peace bonds, while a peace bond for a sixth woman expired.
Dozens of Canadian extremists left to join the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Many were killed but others were taken prisoner by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces and held in northeast Syria.
—with files from Stewart Bell