Edmontonians 'needn't worry' about peace bonds issued for detainees returning from Syrian camps

The lawyer for two women and three children returning home to Edmonton on Friday after spending about five years in Syrian detention camps says despite a federal court ordering peace bonds for the adults, the public has nothing to fear.

The lawyer for two women and three children returning home to Edmonton on Friday after spending about five years in Syrian detention camps says despite a federal court ordering peace bonds for the adults, the public has nothing to fear.

While a peace bond is a protection order made by a Canadian court under the Criminal Code, it does not imply people placed under them are suspected of committing a crime.

Ottawa lawyer Lawrence Greenspon, who represents the women and three others who returned to Canada in April, said people "needn't worry" that they would be a threat to public safety.

"What’s happened here is the rights of Canadians overseas have been violated for a period of five years, and now, they’re going to be brought home, be reunited with their families and integrated back into Canadian society," Greenspon said of the group, who had been held in the camps because they are wives, widows and children of foreigners suspected of joining the Islamic State during the Syrian civil war.

The peace bond is a way of imposing conditions on them, such as mandatory use of electronic monitoring bracelets, curfews, and denial of access to the internet and social media, Greenspon said.

The sisters-in-law and the three children, whose mother is one of them, were part of a group of 19 Canadians that Global Affairs Canada agreed to bring home after they sued the federal government. A settlement was reached in January.

Fourteen of them arrived in Canada in April. The other five failed to show up for that flight, with neither their lawyers nor the Canadian government seemingly aware of what had happened to them for several days.