Hamilton native who married ISIL fighter returns to Canada
A Hamilton native who left Canada to marry an ISIL fighter she met online in 2015 and has spent years in a Syrian detention camp, has been returned home.
Kimberly Polman, a 49-year-old resident of British Columbia who grew up in Hamilton, returned to Canada on Wednesday along with another ISIL bride, Oumaima Chouay.
Chouay faces charges of leaving Canada to participate in the activity of a terrorist group, participation in the activity of a terrorist group, providing property or services for terrorism purposes and conspiracy to participate in the activity of a terrorist group.
It was not clear Wednesday what charges, if any, Polman may be facing. Her lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, said he spoke to her after she landed in Montreal and his understanding is that federal authorities will be seeking a peace bond imposing conditions on her release. He said she was en route to Vancouver.
At that point, I expect she will be brought before a justice of the peace and will enter into a recognizance," Greenspon said.
Greenspon said in an interview with the Canadian Press that his client was delighted to be back in Canada, adding that Polman's poor health is the principal reason she was repatriated.
Polman is reportedly suffering from kidney and lung infections and told Human Rights Watch in October 2021 that she had endured repeated bouts of hepatitis."
I am dying a slow death here and I have done everything I can think of to get help. Nothing has worked," she wrote in a letter.
Polman's family told the Canadian Press last year that she had been suffering from post-traumatic stress and other challenges about six years ago when she surprised them by turning up in Syria.
She married an ISIL fighter but they soon separated. She was imprisoned and later denounced ISIL publicly.
He had a vibrant personality, not what you would have expected for the persona of a terrorist," Polman said of her late-husband in a film
The film, The Return: Life After ISIS," that chronicled the lives of women who married ISIL men, and were held in the northeast Syria detention camp hoping for repatriation home.
After Polman's first ISIL husband was killed she married another.
The filmmaker, Alba Sotorra, told The Spectator in 2021 that the women were lured in by ISIL propaganda.
In 2020, Polman told ABC News that she was unaware of the murderous nature of ISIL when she left Canada in 2015.
It is not clear what role Polman may have played in ISIL during the height of the terror group's atrocities in Syria and Iraq. In the film, she says she worked in an underground ISIL field hospital in 2019.
The arrest of Chouay was the culmination of the investigation triggered after the woman left Canada in 2014, said Insp. David Beaudoin of the RCMP.
According to the investigation, Ms. Chouay allegedly travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State terrorist group," Beaudoin said outside RCMP headquarters in Montreal. In Syria, it is alleged she participated in terrorist activities in the name of the Islamic State."
In November 2017, the RCMP says, Chouay was taken prisoner by the Syrian Democratic Forces and held at the Roj camp in a region recaptured from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. That's where she remained until her return to Canada, along with her two children who were born while she was overseas.
Speaking before the Liberal caucus meeting in Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked about the repatriation effort and charges.
Fundamentally, travelling for the purpose of supporting terrorism is a crime in Canada. And anyone who travelled for the purpose of supporting terrorism should face criminal charges," he said.
I'm not going to speak directly to any given situation, because it's in the hands of the police and eventually the courts. But it is important that we make sure that people know you cannot get away with supporting terrorism in this country, regardless of the circumstances."
Asked if other repatriation efforts are underway, Trudeau said Canadian authorities continue to engage responsibly" in the region.
-With files from the Canadian Press and Toronto Star
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