Women walk in Roj detention camp in northeast Syria Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. Two Canadian women who were arrested after returning to Canada from a prison camp in northeastern Syria last week are expected to appear in a Brampton, Ont., court today. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Baderkhan Ahmad
BRAMPTON, Ont. – Ontario judges have ordered that two women who were arrested upon returning to Canada last week from a prison camp in northeastern Syria be released on bail.
Ammara Amjad and Dure Ahmed were ordered released on bail pending terrorism peace bond applications, under conditions that cannot be detailed because they are subject to publication bans.
The two women appeared Tuesday at the Ontario Court of Justice in Brampton, Ont. for separate bail hearings
They were among four Canadian women and 10 children who landed in Montreal last week after being held for years at the al-Roj prison camp in northeastern Syria.
Another woman who was among the group Canada repatriated from Syria was released on bail in Edmonton Friday, pending a terrorism peace bond application.
A terrorism peace bond allows a judge to order the defendant to enter into an arrangement to be of good behaviour, potentially with conditions such as a curfew, or else possibly face a prison sentence.
The detainees in the camps the group returned from are mostly women and children who were rounded up after the fall of the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in 2019.
About 10,000 of them are foreign nationals from more than 60 countries outside Syria and Iraq, and the Kurds have asked those countries to repatriate their citizens.
Some are relatives of suspected ISIL fighters, but they have never been brought before a court and the women are not currently charged with crimes.
The al-Roj prison camp is one of two displaced persons camps in the region that is now controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 11, 2023.
