‘Dear Canadians … I’ve made a terrible mistake’: B.C. woman who pleaded guilty to terrorism tells court

A B.C. woman who converted to Islam and married an Islamic State fighter says her decision to leave Canada to join his fight was a “terrible mistake” that she will regret for the rest of her life.

Kimberly Polman’s admission is contained in a handwritten letter she wrote in 2019 — addressed to “Dear Canadians” — asking the federal government to let her return to Canada. The letter was included in an agreed statement of facts provided to the B.C. Supreme Court when she pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge last month. They were ordered released this week by the judge in the case.

It’s the first time the public has heard from Polman, 53, who was repatriated to Canada in 2022 and charged in 2024 with two terrorism counts — leaving Canada to participate in terrorist activity and participating in the activity of a terrorist group.

She pleaded guilty on Oct. 8 to the first count. The second one was dropped, cancelling her jury trial that was set to begin this month.

Polman, who moved to Squamish upon her return to Canada, will learn her sentence after a two-week hearing scheduled to begin later this month.

Before leaving for Syria, Polman was an unemployed mother of two grown children, living in low-income housing in Vancouver on social assistance, according to the 10-page agreed statement of facts.

Polman, the document said, converted to Islam in 2003. Around 2013, she began reading online about the extremist ideology of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and listed by Canada as a terrorist group.

She was also conversing online with people who held those views and whose goal was the establishment of an Islamic state under Shariah law, it said. That’s how she met the man she married online in 2014, Suhayb Muhammad Anan, a Kenyan of Somali descent. In 2015, she moved to join him in Syria, according to the court document. She planned to work in a hospital where she could deliver babies and help children.

But six months after joining Anan in Syria, he divorced her. She was required to live in an all-female guest house until he got her an apartment three months later, the document said.

Ten months later, she married another member of Islamic State, Safraz Ali, who produced explosives and landmines.

She remained with him until January 2019, when they were captured by forces of the U.S-led coalition fighting ISIS near Baghouz, the group’s last Syrian stronghold, according to the agreed statement of facts.

She was turned over to the Syrian troops and eventually taken to the Al-Roj camp in April 2019, where she remained until her return to Canada in October 2022, it said.

“I made a terrible mistake, which I regret constantly and will for the rest of my life,” she wrote in a handwritten letter neatly printed in ink on lined paper, dated April 3, 2019, from “Camp Roj, Hasakah, Syria.”

“I came to ISIS believing I could help women and children … Immediately I was thrown into a world of intense fear, unable to leave.”

She wrote that she came to see ISIS for “what they truly are, a group of powerful men using a highly manipulative combination of religious texts, social media, cultural differences and an ‘us-versus-them’ message.”