'Demanding an autopsy': Mother of 6 dies in deportation centre after Canadian government refuses to repatriate her

F.J.'s children are shown.

A Quebec mother of six, once detained in northeast Syria, has died while waiting for repatriation. The Canadian woman was known only by her initials F.J.

The federal government refused to repatriate her, but brought home her two daughters and four sons to Montreal earlier this year.

Global Affairs Canada's position was that F.J. posed a security risk, and that there were no means to control her behaviour once she entered Canada.

"That excuse for not repatriating her was patently false," says her Ottawa-based lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon. "We know that because we managed to bring eight Canadian women and 21 Canadian children, and some of those women are subject to very strict conditions from the moment they set foot in Canada."

The forty-year-old died under mysterious circumstances in a Turkish deportation centre, according to Greenspon. He called her death an unnecessary tragedy.

Greenspon said F.J. escaped the Al-Roj camp in March, but was arrested in Turkiye three months later and was charged with membership in an armed terrorist group.

She was held at the Tarsus Closed Women's Prison in Tarsus, southeast Turkiye and her trial was held on October 15. She was acquitted and transferred to a detention centre.

On the morning of October 17, prison guards found her dead. Greenspon says she was a strong woman who had survived very difficult conditions for a long time, and that her only objective was to get home to Canada to her children.

"We're demanding an autopsy be performed." Greenspon said. "The timing is very suspicious. It just doesn't make sense that after being acquitted on the 15th, within forty-eight hours she was found dead."

Al-Roj camp, where F.J. was detained for six years, was operated by Kurdish authorities. In 2023, when a Canadian civil society delegation visited her, F.J.‘S children were between the ages of five and 14-years-old. Three of her children were born in Syria, two of them during the country’s civil war, while another was born in the detention camp where disease was rampant.

"It makes you wonder what kind of unhumanitarian policy or basis was put forward to, on the one hand, bring back the children, and on the other say 'no' to their mother," Greenspon says.

F.J. is thought to have been the last Canadian woman held in Syria. At least eight others were returned to B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.

During the brutal war in Syria and Iraq, several Canadian extremists headed to the region. Some were killed in the conflict, and when Kurdish forces defeated ISIS in 2019, others were sent to makeshift prisons or detention camps. It is not clear how many had joined the ranks of ISIS.

Alex Neve is a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, and he was part of delegation from civil society that visited Syrian prison camps last August and met F.J. and her children.

He says Ottawa's position was unfounded in Canadian law, and that the Quebec woman had said she was prepared to answer allegations against her in the context of a fair legal process.

"Having met her, that was a very tight family unit," he says. "Canadian policy had allowed her children to return to this country, and after all the trauma they have gone through, now the sorrowful news they will never see her again."

Neve and the civil society delegation wrote to Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly as well as Public Safety Minister Dominic Leblanc on Thursday asking for an independent investigation to be held on an urgent basis.

He says Canada should determine the circumstances that drove F.J. to leave the camp and head to Turkiye, as well as how the case was handled.

"But above all, her six children, whether it is today or in the years down the road deserve and have the right to know what happened to their mother and why," says Neve. "And the Canadian government has the responsibility to ensure that happens."

In an email to CTV News, Global Affairs Canada said it was aware of reports of the death of a Canadian woman in Turkiye, but "cannot share any further information at this time due to privacy considerations." 

There are still at least four Canadian men held in prisons in northeast Syria, They are waiting for the Supreme Court of Canada to decide if it will hear their application to overturn a decision by the Federal Court of Appeal to deny them repatriation.

There are also two cases of foreign born mothers of Canadian children seeking repatriation before the Federal Court.