Squamish woman who wed ISIS fighter pleads guilty in B.C. to terrorism charge

Kimberly Polman in 2015 just before she left for Syria.  Photo by Handout

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A Squamish woman with dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship who moved to Syria to marry an ISIS member she met online pleaded guilty to one terrorism-related charge on Thursday.

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Kimberly Polman, 53, left Canada in 2015 at the urging of her future husband but later repudiated the terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a jihadist militant organization.

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Her plea in B.C. Supreme Court represented her “taking responsibility for her actions in 2015,” her lawyer, David Ferguson, said in an email on Thursday.

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Polman was allowed to return to Canada in 2022 after she spent almost four years in a Syrian detention camp, “not knowing whether she would ever return to Canada,” he said.

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“It’s been a long road since to get to this point,” said Ferguson.

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She has the support of her family and other community resources and accepts she will sentenced later this year, he said.

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A trial before a judge and jury was set to begin in November on two terrorism counts under Canada’s Criminal Code.

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In an email announcing the charges in 2024, RCMP called them “leaving Canada to participate in the activity of a terrorist group” and “participating in the activity of a terrorist group.”

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She pleaded guilty to the first charge.

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She is not in custody and is scheduled to appear in court before the end of the month to fix a date for sentencing. The maximum sentence is 10 years.

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The RCMP referred questions to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. Prosecutors didn’t immediately return requests for comment.

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In the period since Polman originally pleaded not guilty, she has appeared by video at a number of pretrial hearings in B.C. Supreme Court to put forward applications and Charter challenges.

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Her family has said publicly that she survived physical and mental trauma over years of war and subsequent internment in a camp before her return to Canada in 2022, and they believed she was a target of the terrorist group and feared for her life.

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Polman told the New York Times in 2016 she had repudiated the Islamic militant movement and wanted to come home, but her pleas to U.S. authorities were denied.

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The UN in 2022, in an endorsement for her return to Canada, said Polman was held in a camp in Syria’s northeast “under conditions meeting the threshold of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

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It said she was detained in March 2019 and was held without charges.

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“Victims or potential victims of trafficking should not be placed in situations that expose them to multiple forms of abuses,” a group of UN special rapporteurs said in the 2022 statement. “The failure of their home state to protect individuals in such situations perpetuates and contributes to further victimization of those who have already experienced violence and trauma.”