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BRAMPTON — Robert Somerville had no trouble getting to Syria last July to join the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Getting home was a different story.

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When the Canadian army veteran stopped in Brisbane on Feb. 1, Australian border police questioned him about his time in Syria with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, held him at a detention centre and deported him.

Canada Border Services Agency officers were waiting when his plane landed at Vancouver airport on Feb. 5. They searched his phone and laptop. They quizzed him about posts on his Facebook page.

“They asked me about other Canadians there. I said I knew some but I didn’t give any names,” he said. They wanted to know if he was bringing back any weapons. Eventually, they returned his passport and let him go.

“It was an hour and a half. I was glad to get out of there,” Somerville, who served in Afghanistan with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry before heading to Syria, said over coffee in the farm belt north of Toronto.