The mother of a Canadian detained in Syria says the Supreme Court of Canada signed her son’s death warrant, closing the door on a petition to hear his case.
“I’ve been screaming about this for seven and a half years,” said Sally Lane, Jack Letts’ mother. “I’m exhausted. I just want my son back.”
The Supreme Court had already refused to hear a challenge to a Federal Court of Appeal ruling that said Ottawa is not required by law to repatriate Letts and three other Canadian men.
In a new notice filed with the court in March, the men’s lawyers said extremely rare circumstances warranted another review of the application for leave to appeal.
A letter to attorneys, dated last Friday, says the motion for reconsideration cannot be accepted for filing, so there are no further appeals left in the superior court.
“I have reviewed your motion for reconsideration and your supporting affidavit,” the clerk’s letter says. “I regret to inform you that, in my opinion, your motion does not reveal extremely rare circumstances that would warrant reconsideration by this Court.”
The detained Canadians are among many foreigners in ramshackle detention centers run by Kurdish forces who recaptured the war-torn region from the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Letts became a devout Muslim, going on holiday to Jordan aged 18 and then studying in Kuwait before ending up in Syria. His family says he was captured by Kurdish forces while fleeing the country with a group of refugees in 2017.
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Letts and the three other Canadians won one battle in their protracted fight in January 2023, when Federal Court Judge Henry Brown ordered Ottawa to request their repatriation from miserable conditions as soon as possible and provide them with passports or emergency travel documents. .
Brown said the men also had the right to have a representative of the federal government travel to Syria to help secure their release once their captors agreed to hand them over.
However, the Federal Court of Appeal overturned the ruling.
The Nov. 1 letter from the Supreme Court clerk says the file is now closed and no more documents will be accepted for filing.
“The Supreme Court just callously signed my son’s death warrant,” Lane said Monday.
“I hope this government doesn’t care about human rights as all it cares about is popularity in the next election, but for the Supreme Court to not care either is heartbreaking and truly unbelievable.”
The identities of the other three Canadians are not publicly known.
In the original application to the Supreme Court, the men’s lawyers said their clients had been arbitrarily detained for several years without charge or trial.
“They are imprisoned in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, and at least one Canadian is held with 30 other men in a cell built for six people. They lack adequate food and medical care and one of the applicants reported to Canadian government officials that he had been tortured.”
Lawyers said the men’s foreign jailers would release them if Canada made the request and facilitated their repatriation, as it had done for some Canadian women and children.
Attorney Lawrence Greenspon, who represents two of the unnamed men, expressed disappointment Monday at the Supreme Court’s latest ruling.
Greenspon said it is possible to file a complaint with the United Nations about the federal government’s inaction.
The court’s decision follows the recent death in Türkiye of a Canadian woman who had escaped from a detention camp in northeastern Syria.
Senator Kim Pate, human rights activist Alex Neve and lawyer Hadayt Nazami last month asked Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly to open an impartial investigation into the death.
Pate, Neve and Nazami were part of a delegation that met with the woman and her six young children in August 2023 in a Syrian camp.
The federal government helped the children come to Canada in May. However, Ottawa refused to repatriate the woman, known publicly only as FJ, for safety reasons.
When asked last Friday about the case, Joly said it is necessary to understand the circumstances of the woman’s death.
“His six children are in Canada. We owe them the truth and, not only that, we owe them support,” he stated. “And then you can count on me personally to make sure that’s a priority for me and my team.”
Joly’s department, Global Affairs Canada, did not provide details Monday about what that might entail.
Spokesperson Renelle Arsenault said Canada is aware of reports of the death of a Canadian woman in Turkey, adding that Canadian officials “are in contact with local authorities on this matter.”
Greenspon, who has helped the family, said it’s important to get to the bottom of what happened. “This is a matter that clearly needs to be investigated.”
© 2024 The Canadian Press
