From hotels, to wine and candy: Canada spent $170K to bring back women who joined Islamic State

Yahoo

5 hours ago

The federal government spent more than $170,000 to bring Canadian women and their children back to the country after they went overseas to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, documents show.
As first reported by Global News, the documents, which were released under access to information legislation, contain details of the costs incurred when eight women, along with their children, were brought home from Syria. They include costs for business class air travel and hotel bills in Montreal that include wine, candy and chocolates. A number of the women have since been charged with terrorism offences.
On Friday, the Conservatives called for an investigation into the expenditures in a letter addressed to Jean-Yves Duclos, the chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, Global News reported.
'With Canadians lining up in food banks in record numbers and struggling with housing costs, the Liberal government must answer for why they spent $170,000 on lavish costs to repatriate reported ISIS criminals,' the letter reportedly says.
The Conservative party did not respond by press time to National Post's request for comment.
The first round of repatriations, completed in October 2022, cost $10,863, according to the documents from Global Affairs Canada. Canadians Kimberly Polman and Oumaima Chouay were returned to the country in that operation. Polman is facing terrorism charges and Chouay pleaded guilty last month to one charge of participating in the activities of a terrorist group.
The second operation, which occurred in April 2023, cost $132,746 in expenses for government staff and those returned to Canada.
Not all the expenses are detailed in the documents, but the total cost includes $20,331 for 23 hotel rooms at the Marriott hotel at the Montreal Airport, including room-service bills and a catering tab of nearly $3,000. At the time, four Canadian women — three of whom were arrested upon arrival — and their 10 children were returned to Canada, The Canadian Press reported.
Among that group was Edmontonian Aimee Lucia Vasconez, who was married to two different ISIS fighters, according to an affidavit filed in court by an RCMP officer. Another, Ammara Amjad, was also arrested and faces a terrorism charge.
Individual bills show that one room cost nearly $1,100, driven up from the original room cost of $638 by purchases of $95 worth of wine, a $105 room-service meal and $87 worth of items from the hotel gift store, including chocolate, chips and drugs such as Benadryl and Reactine.
That same room tipped $7 on an $8 coffee. Another room ordered $15 worth of children's ice cream, and a third ordered white, red and sparkling wine at $25 apiece. One room's food bill included two $24 smoked meat dishes.
The third repatriation operation, done in early July 2023, cost more than $27,500 and saw a government of Canada employee purchase snacks, including goldfish and granola bars, from Costco, and Timbits from Tim Hortons, for the operation. Hotel rooms in Montreal cost a bit more than $2,300.
Two Edmonton women, Dina Kalouti and Helena Carson, were among that group. Both have been sentenced to six-month peace bonds and they are required to continue counselling with the Edmonton-based Organization for the Prevention of Violence (OPV), which provides programming for people seeking to leave extremist groups.
The documents redact a number of details, and 50 pages were not released, as they are under consultation. The documents do not appear to account for the costs of actually flying to Syria to get the women from detention camps; they include only the costs of transferring them within Canada.
Global Affairs Canada did not respond to National Post's requests for comment by press time.
A number of Canadian women travelled to the Middle East when the Islamic State seized territory in Iraq and Syria more than a decade ago. However, the terrorist group lost much of its territory, and Canadians who had been living and fighting with the Islamic State were held in detention camps. This led to a major push, particularly from the United States, to have nations repatriate their citizens who were held in Syria.
In 2023 alone, the U.S. state department reported under then U.S. president Joe Biden, 14 countries — Canada among them — repatriated 3,500 citizens from where they were detained. Overall, the administration reported that nearly 7,000 family members of foreign fighters had been repatriated by 30 countries. The U.S. bureau of counterterrorism warned in December 2023 that more than half of those held in camps were under the age of 12 and if they remained, they would become vulnerable to ISIS recruitment, perhaps fuelling a resurgence of the terrorist group.
— With addition reporting by the Edmonton Journal and The Canadian Press
Quebec woman pleads guilty to joining ISIL, sentenced to one day in custody
Ruling ordering Ottawa to bring Canadian ISIL suspects home sparks security debate
Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.