(CTV) Following four days of hearings, including top-secret testimony on the final day of proceedings, a federal court judge will now decide if Canada has violated the rights of dozens of its citizens imprisoned in northeast Syria.
Proceedings have been public except for Friday’s hearing, where classified evidence was presented to Justice Henry Brown as he weighs whether to order the government to bring the Canadian detainees home within a set timeline.
More than 40 Canadians have been languishing in camps and prisons run by Kurdish authorities since the fall of the Islamic State in 2019. The majority of the remaining detainees are women and children.
Barbara Jackman represents Jack Letts, a Canadian Muslim convert, one of five men held in Kurdish-run prisons. She says the lawyers representing the detainees will only get a short summary of what happened during Friday’s top-secret hearing.
