Ep 56 Fear and Loathing in the Levant

Stephanie and Craig were joined Thursday by Thomas Juneau, professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and from 2003-2014 a strategic analyst at the Department of National Defence, covering the Middle East. This was a big week of news from that region. We cover two things: first we discuss the disappearance and seeming murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey. Thomas walks through what’s going on with Saudi foreign policy, and what this latest incident means. Then, we shift gears about 30 minutes into the podcast and talk about the breaking news reported by Stewart Bell at Global. All week Stewart has been reporting on Canadian former ISIS affiliates detained by Kurdish forces in Syria. This is a big new development in the continuing debate about “what to do about foreign fighters”. In this episode, we talk about whether Canada has to take these people back and who in the Canadian government should (and should not) be interviewing them. In our next episode, we’ll bring in another guest with lots of criminal law experience and do a deep dive on the question of prosecuting returning foreign fighters. (Apologies for the HVAC background noise. Our chief technician, Craig, had a bit of a mic fail.)