Canada to repatriate British-born ‘Jihadi Jack’ along with 22 others held in Syria

Canada’s government has been ordered to repatriate 23 Canadian citizens being held in Islamic State camps in Syria – including British-born Muslim convert Jack Letts, it is understood.

Letts, who had held dual UK and Canadian citizenship, left his family home in Oxford in 2014 to allegedly fight with IS as a teenager.

He previously told Sky News he wanted to be released from jail to join the fight against Islamist radicalisation.

Known as “Jihadi Jack”, Letts was stripped of his British citizenship in 2019 by the Home Office.

In a ruling late on Friday, the Canadian federal court said the government must bring home four Canadian men – after an agreement was reached earlier this week to repatriate six women and 13 children, also being held in camps in northeast Syria.

It follows a court case brought against the government by the detainees’ relatives who argued that preventing them from returning to Canada would violate their constitutional rights.

Federal court judge Henry Brown directed the government to request the repatriation of the men as soon as reasonably possible and provide them with passports or emergency travel documents.

The Canadians held in Syria are among the many foreign nationals in camps across the war-torn region, which are run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the territory from IS.

Judge Brown said a representative of the federal government must travel to Syria in order to facilitate the return of the men after their captors agree to hand them over.

Letts, who converted to Islam at the age of 16, was caught by Kurdish authorities who have held him prisoner since 2017.

The decision to strip British citizenship from Letts, who is a Canadian national because his father was born in Canada, follows the revocation of IS bride Shamima Begum’s British citizenship in February 2019.

In an interview with Sky News in 2019, Letts confessed to fighting against the Syrian regime but said he regretted being with the “wrong people”.

He also said he felt guilty for what he put his parents through, after they were found convicted of funding terrorism after they sent him cash.