Ottawa responds to UN pressure about well-being of Canadian detained in Syria

Jack Letts is one of several Canadian citizens among the many foreign nationals in Syrian camps run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-torn region from ISIL.

The federal government has told United Nations officials that international human rights law does not obligate Canada to actively facilitate the return of its citizens detained in northern Syria.

Ottawa says that instead, the duty of respecting international conventions largely falls on the foreign state that is holding people captive.

Canada spells out its view in an Aug. 24 response to UN officials who pressed Ottawa about the case of Jack Letts.

Letts, 26, is one of several Canadian citizens among the many foreign nationals in Syrian camps run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-torn region from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Letts was born in Oxford, England, but the British government stripped him of citizenship three years ago.

He became a devoted Muslim, went on holiday to Jordan at 18, then studied in Kuwait before winding up in Syria and, his family says, getting captured by Kurdish forces while fleeing the country with a group of refugees in 2017.

John Letts and his wife, Sally, say they have seen no evidence that their son became a terrorist fighter, adding that Jack stood against ISIL and was even put on trial for publicly condemning the group.

“I don’t think he was one of those people who did horrible things,” John Letts told The Canadian Press last December. “I’m convinced of it.”