LONDON, U.K. -- Lawrence Greenspon got a surprise telephone call last Sunday morning. It was from the senior legal counsel for Global Affairs Canada. Why is this person calling me on the weekend, he wondered?
There was a very good reason. It had to do with a 5-year-old Canadian orphan stranded in northeastern Syria. Several weeks earlier, Greenspon had launched a legal action to get her out.
Out of sheer desperation, after months of stonewalling by the government, the little girl’s remaining family in Canada finally turned to a lawyer for help.
Greenspon took on the case because he considered it a grievous injustice—a Canadian, a child no less, held in a squalid, dangerous refugee camp, denied her rights as a citizen.
Whatever crimes her parents may have committed—as followers of ISIS—it seemed wrong, cruel even, to abandon her.
The phone call on Sunday ended the family’s 18-month struggle in the best way possible. A happy ending without a lengthy court battle.
Amira, he was told, was on her way to Canada. The government had bowed to pressure, and sent in a diplomatic rescue team.
Greenspon told me that when he in turn phoned people to pass on the news—people who had campaigned on Amira’s behalf—they cried.
“This is life-changing for the family,” he said, “life-saving for Amira.”
I have seen almost every e-mail her uncle sent to the government, sometimes more than one-a-day. And he made hundreds of phone calls to Global Affairs officials—so many, they were on a first-name basis.
He was forever polite, and forever frustrated. His contacts in Ottawa were sympathetic, but they were largely helpless. Only Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had the power to bring Amira home.
Refusing to rescue a small child from Syria was not a good image for Trudeau, both as a father and a politician. Other countries had brought their orphans out, why was Canada resisting?
I heard the word shameless used a few times.
The Prime Minister was right when he said this was an exceptional case. He was perhaps less than upfront when he said “we have worked very hard, over the past months to bring her to Canada.”
The response from human rights campaigners: what took you so long? And what about the other Canadians still in detention, many of them women and children.
Greenspon believes Amira’s rescue is a breakthrough. Canada, he says, can no longer claim it’s too dangerous to send diplomats into northern Syria.
“The obstacles are gone, and that begs the question. What about the other 46 Canadians in Syria? Why not bring them home?”
At least one little girl has been saved. That will bring hope to others.
