January 22, 2026 – Canadian families whose loved ones have been arbitrarily detained for up to 9 years under appalling conditions in northeast Syrian prisons and prison camps are calling on Ottawa to immediately repatriate them before they are rendered to potential torture in Iraq.
The demand comes on the heels of a United States CENTCOM statement that thousands of detainees similarly held for years without charge or access to any form of judicial review are in the process of being transferred to Iraq during a 4-day ceasefire that follows weeks of armed conflict between the new government in Damascus and the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who have held custody of the Canadians.
Amnesty International has pointed out that Iraq remains a country rife with arbitrary detention, torture, a systemic failure to conduct fair trials, and execution in so-called national security cases.
“This is an act of extraordinary rendition to torture on top of the years of arbitrary detention, torture, and complete abandonment of our loved ones by the Canadian government,” said Sally Lane, mother of the longest held detainee, Jack Letts. “How on earth can Canada stand by when we’ve informed them that my son and other Canadian citizens are now at risk of going from one legal black hole into another when all along, all they’ve had to do is agree to the request of Jack’s jailers and the US State Department for repatriation? Canada doesn’t actually have to do anything besides make a request and provide travel documents. The Americans do the rest.”
The issue of repatriation from northeast Syria has long been a point of contention resisted by the federal government, which has only repatriated Canadians – to date, 32 formerly detained women and children – when forced to by public pressure and legal action. But Global Affairs Canada and Public Safety Canada have expended millions to try and prevent the return of the remaining 9 men while also refusing to grant temporary residence permits to the two mothers of five Canadian children who remain detained.
“This is state-sponsored Islamophobia in action,” explained Matthew Behrens of Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture, which for years has worked to bring the Canadians home. “The Federal Court of Canada concluded there is absolutely no evidence that these men have ever been involved in acts of violence or criminality, but unfortunately, they have all been tarred with the same unsubstantiated security brush simply because as Muslim men they were in Syria at a particular time in history and had no way of escaping. And Canada has refused to end their detention in what many have called Guantanamo in the Desert, where over half of the tens of thousands of detainees are children.”
(Jack Letts, during a prison interview with CTV's W5, Fall, 2024, Syria)
Lane notes that her son had gone to Syria to help the people suffering under Assad’s barrel bombs and mass torture, and had been detained on three occasions by ISIS for opposing their hateful ideology and atrocities. When he finally escaped in May 2017, he was captured by the Kurdish SDF, and has been held without charge or access to lawyers, family, or a judicial review ever since.
Global Affairs Canada and Public Safety Canada currently operate under a “Policy Framework” that determines whether or not they will consider repatriation of the Canadians. The Framework has been criticized as discriminatory and fundamentally flawed by the Federal Court of Canada, human rights organizations and international law experts. In December, 2024, at the invitation of the government, family members presented submissions to those departments demanding repatriation, but more than 13 months later, have received no response.
“When the Two Michaels were arbitrarily detained in China, Canada started a global coalition against such detention and did everything under the sun to bring them home, as well they should,” said John Letts, Jack’s father. “And yet when it comes to Muslim Canadians, the government has not only looked away. It has actively fought us and tried to prevent our loved ones from exercising their Charter right to come home. Unless they act in the coming days, will our families be condemned to another decade of this torturous black hole? It’s all well and good for Prime Minister Carney to extol the importance of international law at Davos, but my long-suffering son knows that this is just more hot air from Canada.”
Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture
2583 Carling Ave., Unit M052
Ottawa, ON K2B 7H7
(613) 300-9536
CENTCOM Statement: https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/4383698/us-forces-launch-mission-in-syria-to-transfer-isis-detainees-to-iraq/
