Canadians feared missing at Syrian detention camp alive, but in distress, lawyer says

Two Canadian women and three teenage girls feared missing in northeastern Syria after not showing up for a planned repatriation flight to Canada have now made contact with a family member, but there are still concerns for their well-being and questions about their whereabouts continue, according to their lawyer. 

One of their lawyers, Zachary Al-Khatib, told CBC News on Tuesday that one of the missing women was able to make a short phone call Tuesday morning to a relative and expressed they were all in distress. 

Al-Khatib says he still fears the women and teens are in danger.

"I'm extremely concerned for their safety and well-being," Al-Khatib said Tuesday. "They're in distress and want to be brought back to Canada."

Global Affairs Canada has not yet confirmed if it's located the group of women and teens that have been missing for more than a week.

Al-Khatib said earlier on Monday that relatives in Canada received a frantic text message earlier this month from a woman at al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria saying she saw the women being put into a military vehicle on April 2 and taken away to an interrogation site controlled by Kurdish authorities known as the "Red Prison."

The Toronto Star was first to report on the developments on Monday. 

The women were supposed to be among a group of 19 Canadian women and children the federal government promised to bring home to Canada, but only 14 were on the plane on April 6.

The two missing Canadian women are from the Edmonton area and are 41 and 33 years old, said Al-Khatib. One of the women has three teenage daughters with her, he said. 

The government had struck a last-minute deal in December 2022 to repatriate 19 Canadian women and children, just a day before a Federal Court judge was going to render his decision on whether the government must bring back that group of Canadians who have been detained for years in Kurdish-run refugee camps in northeastern Syria.

An audio recording from April 11 between the mother of one of the women — who lives in the Edmonton area— and a Global Affairs official, according to Al-Khatib, says allies warned Canada that sometimes citizens don't show up for repatriations at the designated pick-up point. 

The Canadian official was calling the woman to explain efforts are underway to try and locate her daughter. 

During the roughly 16-minute recording CBC News listened to, the Global Affairs official is heard saying Canada's repatriation efforts in the past have gone smoothly, but other countries warned that wasn't always the case.

"We didn't want to believe that happens, but this has happened to other countries and they tried to warn us," the Global Affairs official said on the recording to the mother a week ago. "And when it did actually happen, we were kind of shocked by it.