Why Canada took 18 months to get an orphan out of a Syrian detention camp
Global News
Newly released documents show the government spent months mulling over what to do about a Canadian orphan at an ISIS camp before sending officials to get her.
On Sunday, Oct. 4, 2020, a Canadian government delegation crossed the Tigris River into northeast Syria to take custody of a five-year-old orphan.
Amira was the only survivor of a Canadian family killed by an airstrike during the fight against ISIS, to which her parents had allegedly belonged.
A year later, internal documents released to Global News under the Access to Information Act describe the months of discussions that preceded the handover.
They show Canadian officials knew about Amira in April 2019, located her that December, and in February 2020 were invited by U.S.-backed Kurdish authorities to come get her.
But Canadian officials instead spent months exchanging memos over what to do, and insisting northeast Syria wasn’t safe for them to visit, the documents show.
While the U.S. and other countries were sending delegations to the region, Canadian officials wrote that they weren’t allowed to, citing “federal legislation and the Canadian Labour Code.”
The documents show Canadian officials wanted “alternate solutions” for getting Amira that did not involve crossing into Syria, before finally sending a delegation to bring her out.
“The situation is complex and COVID-19 has made it even more difficult,” one document read.
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