A mother's hopes to free her son from a Syrian prison is revitalized by a new human rights report

Sally Lane holding a copy of the letter she delivered to Global Affairs Canada. (Judy Trinh)

Just days before the seventh anniversary of the day Jack Letts was thrown in a Kurdish prison in northeast Syria, his mother, Sally Lane, delivered a small stack of envelopes to the headquarters of Global Affairs Canada in Ottawa.

The letters were addressed to Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, Public Safety Minister Dominic Leblanc and two other consular affairs officials. They represent a desperate mother’s latest attempt to push for the return of her son who remains imprisoned along with thousands of suspected ISIS fighters.

In 2019, two years after he was arrested, Letts, who was a dual Canadian national, was stripped of his U.K. citizenship after admitting in interviews with British media that he had joined ISIS. Letts has also said that he had opposed ISIS before his capture.

His family says that the interviews were done in the presence of jail guards and that Letts was a victim of torture. Lane says her son was captured while trying to flee the region with a group of refugees.

Letts has never been charged and cannot defend himself against the allegations in a region where there is no legal system to facilitate prosecution.

The letter written by her immigration lawyer, Barbara Jackman, who represents Letts, referred to an “imminent” repatriation flight scheduled to bring back Canadian children and requested that he also be put on that plane.

There are at least 23 Canadians detained in camps and prisons operated by Kurdish forces, including nine men. One Quebec woman and three foreign mothers have been told by the federal government that they are not eligible to return to Canada with their children. Last week, news broke that the Quebec mother had disappeared from the camp, leaving her six children to fend for themselves in Al-Roj camp.

According to Jackman, Canada has organized eight repatriation flights, usually in partnership with the U.S government, since 2020. Canada has brought back women and child detainees from Syria, but no men.

She believes that Global Affairs officials are planning to send a plane to bring the vulnerable children to Canada.

“I am writing to you as counsel for Jack Letts, a Canadian citizen who has repeatedly requested repatriation from northeast Syria, where he has been unlawfully arbitrarily detained since May 3, 2017. I urgently request that my client be placed on that same aircraft and brought back to his family in Canada,” Jackman wrote.

Jackman says the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism has said there is no reasonable likelihood of any judicial proceeding being held which would allow Letts to contest his detention.

“We can see no reason for you to deny this urgent request for repatriation. No charges have been laid against him after 7 years of legal limbo. If there are security concerns, he welcomes addressing them in a fair, open, transparent judicial proceeding in Canada,” the letter continues.

When asked if a repatriation flight for Canadian children was being organized, Global Affairs Canada said it could not comment on specific cases due to “privacy and operational security considerations.”

But GAC spokesperson Genevieve Tremblay underscored that “the safety and security of Canadians is the Government of Canada’s utmost priority.”

The letters, which are 10 pages in length, summarize legal arguments for Letts’ repatriation, and are bolstered by evidence of brutal human rights violations found in new research conducted by Amnesty International. The document also details Lane’s pleas to consular officials over the years and their cold bureaucratic email responses.

“The government isn’t even speaking to me now. It’s like I’m constantly bashing my head against this brick wall,” said Lane in an interview with CTV News after she dropped off the letters.

Yet she refuses to give up, believing that somehow, this latest measure will change the government’s mindset unlike all the other attempts before it.

“I think the Amnesty International report changes everything,” Lane said. “For years the Canadian government said it had no idea what atrocities were going on - now there’s documentation from a reputable organization.”

'Inhumane conditions'

In its report released on April 17, Amnesty International says detainees are “facing systematic violations and dying in large numbers due to inhumane conditions.”

Amnesty estimates that 56,000 people are being held in a system of detention – 30,000 of which are children – following the territorial defeat of the Islamic State.

The detainees are dispersed among at least 27 detention facilities and two camps – Al-Hol and Roj. All are run by autonomous Kurdish authorities financially supported by the U.S. government and other coalition members who helped defeat ISIS.

The human rights organization says most of the people are “arbitrarily and indefinitely detained,” and at risk of dying from disease and infection like cholera and tuberculosis outbreaks. Many are also subjected to torture such as severe beatings, stress positions and electric shocks.

The report found that “scores” of people in detention were victims living in danger among militants. Amnesty says the victims are Yazidi, a religious group indigenous to Kurdistan, but also other women and girls forced to marry fighters and boys recruited and turned into child soldiers.

Alex Neve, an international human rights lawyer, says there’s long been an easy narrative that has tarred thousands of people, including children with connections to ISIS as fighters and family members. However, the Amnesty report now makes it clear that in the majority of cases, that is not only unsubstantiated, but "unjust and inflammatory."

"Now that we have this kind of information in front of the Canadian government, frankly there is no excuse for them to wait one single day more before they take decisive action to bring every single Canadian out of that human rights nightmare,” Neve said.

Beatings and electric shocks in prison

Amnesty’s researchers visited the prisons and camps in northeast Syria three times between September 2022 and August 2023 and interviewed 314 people for the report.

The majority of the 11,500 male detainees are held in prisons similar to the one where Jack Letts is detained. Amnesty International was able to interview eight men.

One man told researchers that he was beaten with plastic and steel pipes and stripped naked and taken outside to the yard where inmates were raped with a stick by guards. The man said he was tortured with an electric cable and deprived of adequate food and water.

A link to Amnesty International’s report is included in the email version of the letter sent to Ministers Joly and Leblanc.

“For years the Canadian government said it had no idea what atrocities were going on – now there’s documentation from a reputable organization,” said Lane, hoping that this report will lead to a breakthrough.

A timeline of despair

The years have passed at an agonizingly slow pace for Lane since she last saw her son and the setbacks have been devastating.

It has been 10 years since Letts, who had become a devoted Muslim, then barely 18 years old, travelled to Syria in September 2014.

On May 3, 2017, he was captured by Kurdish forces while trying to escape Syria with a group of refugees.

In 2019 –the same year Letts was stripped of his U.K. citizenship, his parents were convicted of one charge of funding terrorism in a British court. Lane, using an intermediary, sent her son the equivalent of $400 in part to buy a pair of glasses, despite warnings from police that the money could be used to fund terrorist activities.

In May of 2023, the Federal Court of Appeal overturned a judge’s ruling ordering the Canadian government to repatriate her Lane's son and three other men. The appellate court said the government was not constitutionally obligated to bring the detainees home. Lawyers have since filed an application to the Supreme Court to hear arguments for appeal.

Later that year, an unofficial civil delegation, led by Sen. Kim Pate, visited the Qamishli prison where Letts was held in August 2023. After that mission to northeast Syria, Pate said it was clear to her that “Canada had not fulfilled its human rights obligations,” by leaving approximately two dozen people, most of them children, in detention camps and prisons.

Neve, who was also part of that delegation, said that the group spoke with Letts for an hour. He was unable to ask Letts direct questions about his alleged ISIS connections in the presence of guards, but said that it appeared Letts got along with prison authorities.

“There was a degree of comradery. It did not seem to me, that (Letts) was a prisoner with serious security concerns or seen in a negative light.”

The delegation also gave Lane the proof of life she needed.

“They said he was pale, thin but not emaciated.” Lane said she was relieved that her son could “string together a sentence,” after spending long stretches in solitary confinement.

The delegation also passed to her a photo of a handwritten letter from her son. In it, Letts quoted a popular song written by Robbie Robertson and recorded by Joan Baez – “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” It was a family favourite that Letts would often hear his father singing while he strummed the melody on his guitar.

The song is written from the perspective of an 18-year-old who joins the Confederate army during the American Civil War. Among the words Letts scrawled were the lyrics, "we were hungry and barely alive.”

And while Lane clings to her son’s letter as motivation to get him home, she also provided the civil delegation with a short video they showed Letts to uplift his spirits.

“This is where you will come in Ottawa. I have a lovely apartment which is sunny and bright,” Lane says in the one minute and 30 second video while standing in a park near her home with willow trees and a small creek behind her.

“Jacko, lots of love. We’ll see you soon. Stay strong. We love you.”