Kimberley Polman, who pleaded guilty last month to leaving Canada to join a terrorist group, wrote that her decision to go to ISIS was a “terrible mistake.”
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Kimberley Polman, the B.C. woman who pleaded guilty last month to leaving Canada to participate in activities of a terrorist group, described in a “Dear Canadians” letter that her decision to join ISIS was a “terrible mistake,” according to a signed statement of facts filed in her terrorism case.
The statement of facts includes a handwritten two-page letter Polman composed in the Roj refugee camp in Syria after her capture by U.S.-backed forces, dated April 3, 2019. It also includes two pages of her handwritten notes. Polman has not been sentenced, and a spokeswoman for the Public Prosecution Service of Canada said dates for her sentencing hearing have not yet been scheduled.
In the April 3, 2019 letter, Polman wrote that she “came to ISIS believing I could help women and children” as a nurse. She said the experience brought “intense fear,” that she was “unable to leave,” and that her “desire to help turned into my own need for help,” adding, “It was a mistake, which I regret constantly and will for the rest of my life.”
Polman wrote that she was not a threat and had “no history of violence,” saying she needed to return to Canada for protection after speaking out against ISIS. She said she was viewed by the group as a traitor and wrote, “I’m a traitor to them, someone who has betrayed Islam and must be killed, also because I left — something I had been trying to do for 3.5 years.”
The statement of facts also provides a chronology of Polman’s path from Canada to ISIS-controlled territory. It says she converted to Islam in 2003 and, about a decade later, began researching extremist ideology and communicating with people who held those beliefs.
According to the statement, in 2014 Polman met Suhayb Muhammad Adan, a Kenyan man of Somali descent, and “entered into a marriage” with him that summer. The document says that by July 2015 Polman had formulated a plan to leave Canada, emigrate to Syria, and join Adan and the Islamic State.
It says the data obtained from Polman’s computer showed she knew at the time that the Islamic State was a terrorist entity, that Syria was an active war zone, and that she could be arrested for attempting to leave Canada to join the group. The statement also says she was aware Adan was an ISIS fighter.
Polman, described in the statement as a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen with two adult children in Canada, travelled from Surrey, B.C. to Austria. In July 2015, she went to a Flight Centre in Surrey and booked return flights to Vienna, then continued to Turkey to meet Adan. The statement says she would never use the return tickets.
The statement says Polman travelled to Turkey on July 25, 2015, and then moved toward the Syrian border, staying in Islamic State “safe houses” before the group smuggled her into Syria. It says that by August 2015 she arrived in ISIS-controlled territory and that, upon arrival in Syria, she forfeited her U.S. passport to the group.
The statement says Polman remained in Syria for about seven years. It says Adan divorced her in January 2016, about six months after her arrival. It also says she later worked in the Islamic State hospital in Raqqa caring for infants and children until February, and that in October 2016 she married Safraz Ali, a Trinidadian ISIS member described in the statement as someone who “produced explosives and IEDs.”
The statement says U.S.-backed forces declared Raqqa’s liberation in October 2017 and that Polman and Ali moved to different towns in Syria as the group lost territory. It says Polman was captured by coalition forces on Jan. 27, 2019, just outside the Baghouz area, the last ISIS stronghold in Syria, and that she remained in Syrian detention camps for almost four years.
Global Affairs Canada agreed to repatriate Polman in October 2022, and she arrived in Montreal later that month, where she was arrested. Her trial dates were vacated after she pleaded guilty in October, and she is set to appear in court next week, with sentencing dates not yet scheduled.
In her letter, Polman distances herself from ISIS, portraying her capture as a dramatic escape during which ISIS fighters fired on her and she held an orphan baby girl. She wrote she did not want the Canadian way of life “to ever be poisoned by ISIS,” adding, “The truth is I’m an innocent woman, a Canadian with a heart for children and a desire to help those in need.”
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