Two women arrested on arrival in Canada after repatriation from Syria: lawyer

OTTAWA –

A lawyer for two Canadian women who were just repatriated from Syria says they were arrested by the RCMP Thursday when they got off their flight in Montreal.

Lawyer Lawrence Greenspon says the Crown is seeking terrorist peace bonds that would place strict conditions on them, but that they have not been charged criminally. The women will face bail hearings in the Greater Toronto Area, where their families live.

The two are among a group of 14 Canadians who were flown out of Syria in a U.S. military plane after being freed from the Al-Roj camp in northeastern Syria on Tuesday. Their journey took them to Germany before they were transferred onto a flight bound for Montreal.

The long-anticipated flight to Canada had been expected to bring more people home.

In January, Greenspon reached an angreement with the federal government to repatriate 19 Canadian women and children who had been part of a court action.

Greenspon says five Canadians didn’t make it on the flight, including a single woman and a mother with three children. He said in an interview with CTV News that Global Affairs told him the group did not show up at the designated meeting point.

The flight was held for several hours, as officials mounted a search for them. Greenspon says he doesn’t know if the women and children have been found.

The Canadians were among the many foreign nationals in Syrian camps run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-ravaged region from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

In a news release, the U.S. State Department said that more than 10,000 people are detained in the Al Roj and Al Hol camps in northeast Syria. Most of them are children.