Canada is seeking consular visits for its citizens facing trial in Iraq for allegedly joining the militant group Islamic State for Iraq and Syria more than a decade ago.
Five men were transferred from detention facilities in Syria in January where they had been held for years by the US-backed Kurdish armed group, the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Canadian authorities on Friday contacted the mother of Jack Letts, who travelled to the ISIS-controlled territory as a teenager in 2014, about their request for contact with a prisoner they believe to be her son.
“We have requested consular access to your loved one who has recently been reported as being transferred from Northeast Syria to Iraq,” they said in a letter, seen by The National.
“If access is granted, our immediate focus will be to ascertain his identity and inquire about his well-being."
Mr Letts's mother Sally Lane told The National that Canadian diplomats had first contacted her on February 13, asking her to help confirm the man’s identity. She is certain the man is her son.
The letter gives Ms Lane the opportunity to send a message to the detainee should access be granted, which could be memorised by the Consular Officer in the event that written notes are not allowed in prison.
“I sent a message telling him how much we love him and how we are so proud of his courage and resilience,” she told The National.
Alongside dozens of others, Mr Letts was stripped of his British citizenship in 2019. He maintained his Canadian citizenship, which he holds due to his father.
Hundreds of men detained in north-east Syria without trial since 2017 for suspected links to ISIS were transferred to Iraq by US Central Command in an emergency operation last month, following a fallout between the SDF and the Syrian army, which led to some prisons and camps being temporarily abandoned.
Although nine Canadian nationals are known to have been detained in north-east Syria, the Iraqi government said that five are in custody in Iraq. Only Mr Letts’s identity has been made public.
Although the transfer to Iraq gives Ms Lane hope she will have better chances of seeing her son, she is also concerned that he would not get a fair trial and that he faces the death penalty there.
Canadian officials have said they would “advocate” for the prisoners' “human rights to be respected” but that it could not “interfere” in the trial.
John Letts, Jack’s father, said earlier this month it "beggars belief" that Canada could not confirm the identities of those transferred to Iraq.
A Canadian campaign group for the families of detainees said that five Canadian children were also detained in north-east Syria, with the Canadian authorities refusing to grant temporary resident permits to their two mothers.
Families broke their silence earlier this month over the agony of not being able to confirm their sons' locations in Syria or Iraq. "The dreams I had of my son coming back have vanished," said Sayyida, the mother of a detainee who did not use her real name.
"I send email after email and make call after call to Global Affairs Canada asking about my son’s whereabouts, hoping for an answer that will relieve my pain, but all I receive is a long period of silence followed by the claim that they do not know where he is," she said.
In his first interview while in detention, Mr Letts told the BBC in 2019 that he fought on the front lines of Raqqa, but that he eventually grew disillusioned with ISIS and attempted to leave them.
In a 2024 interview with CTV, he said he’d travelled to Syria to help Syrians fighting against the dictator Bashar Al Assad.
He also rejected claims he had ever been a member of ISIS, adding that “a lot of things I said a long time ago was because I was scared”.
The Syrian government evacuated the last residents of Al Hol camp in north-east Syria last week on security and humanitarian grounds, but said on Thursday that there had been “collective escapes” during the January handover from the SDF who previously controlled it.
"When our forces arrived, they found cases of collective escapes due to the camp having been opened up in a haphazard manner," interior ministry spokesman Noureddine Al Baba told a press conference.
He deplored the camp's conditions, and said that 70 per cent of its residents were women, children and the elderly, most of them Syrians and Iraqi. “Many of them were civilians who were displaced from areas of conflict, and forcibly detained due to alleged affiliations with ISIS,” he said. He added there were also 6,500 from 44 nationalities.
Meanwhile, an EU internal memo raised security concerns about the escape of allegedly “thousands” of people from Al Hol camp, urging caution should another smaller camp be transferred to the Syrian government.
The memo, sent from the Cyprus presidency of the Council of the European Union to member states and dated February 23, said the status of third-country nationals who had fled the camp at Al Hol remained unclear and that it was reported that a majority of them had escaped.
“This raises concerns about how terrorist groups might seek to capitalise on the current situation to increase recruitment efforts among escapees,” said the memo, which was seen by The National.
“There is also reason for concern regarding the possible escape of families from the second closed camp, Al-Roj, once the [Syrian government] takes control,” the memo said.
