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“How are we as parents supposed to arm ourselves, or have an idea what’s going on so we can stop as much as we can on our end, if they’re not going to let us in on it. Because that’s what happened to me. They knew all along, they were following my son for two years apparently and … they didn’t tell me until three months after he’d gone.”

CSIS declined to comment on the case.

‘He was born and raised — I was born and raised — here. I mean, I’m as Canadian as Canadian gets’

She confronted her son about it when he called home in late February. “He just said he had priorities and that there are women and children being tortured there, and it couldn’t go on anymore and he had to do something productive with his life, which was better than he was doing here in Canada, and that he couldn’t stay in Canada with the way things are, the way the world is, and that the afterlife is a better place to be anyways so if that’s what his destiny is then that’s what he needs to do,” she said.

He has been gone seven months now and she worries constantly. Her cell phone never leaves her side. Sometimes when he calls, she can hear the war in the background. She offered to fly to Turkey to bring him home but he doesn’t want to leave Syria. She made him promise that someone would call her should anything happen to him.

She also said she had spoken to the RCMP, and sent letters to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, the Liberal leader, asking for help. Mr. Harper’s office did not respond, she said, while Mr. Trudeau’s assistant wrote back that she was sorry but there was nothing the party could do.

“He was born and raised — I was born and raised — here,” the mother said. “I mean, I’m as Canadian as Canadian gets. And it’s a struggle to understand it and it’s hard. The longer it goes on the harder it gets,” she said. “You just get worn down.”

National Post