Biography
Kyle Snyder, born September 12, 1983 and raised partly in foster care in Colorado, enlisted in the United States Army in 2004 and served in Iraq with the 94th Engineers out of Fort Leonard Wood. In 2005, while on mid-tour leave, he went to Canada, called the war illegal and immoral, and applied for refugee status. On October 31, 2006 he held a press conference and then surrendered to Army authorities at Fort Knox, Kentucky, having been told through his lawyer that he would be discharged quickly and not imprisoned; when he was instead faced with returning to Iraq or going to prison, he left again and travelled the United States speaking against the war.
On February 23, 2007 he was arrested by police in Nelson, British Columbia, at the request of the United States Army. The police had no warrant; he was taken in wearing a robe and boxer shorts, not permitted to dress or to call his lawyer, and was released after roughly six hours when immigration officials confirmed there was no legal basis to hold him.
Whereabouts unverified: no credible recent source has been found locating him, and his country is uncertain — Canada or unknown. No exile start date is recorded on his case, because his time abroad was interrupted by the October 2006 surrender and nothing has documented his location since February 2007. He is recorded here as currently in exile on the assumption that he remains abroad.
The Veteran’s Spring 2007 account distinguishes Kyle Snyder’s renewed absence from the Army after his October 2006 surrender from a later Canadian detention. It reports that he returned to Canada in early January and was arrested by local police on February 23 in Nelson, British Columbia, apparently at the Army’s request. Canadian immigration officials ordered his release six hours later. This locates the previously recorded episode without treating his time in exile or his speaking tour as imprisonment.
