Bringing Nazzareno Tassone’s body back home to Niagara

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An update on a story we brought you earlier this week. Negotiations between Kurdish Forces and ISIS to bring back the body of a Niagara Falls man who died while fighting in Syria are ongoing. According to Nazzareno Tassone’s mother, the Canadian Government is doing very little to help bring her son back home.

“It is a movie. You hear this stuff on a movie. You don’t hear this stuff in real life.”

It’s been exactly a month since Tina Martino last spoke to her son.

“I was hoping a praying that somebody had made a mistake and then I was told that ISIS took pictures of my son and that’s how they knew that it was really him.”

Martino only learned of her son’s death this week when a letter was hand delivered to her Niagara Falls home.

24 year old Nazzareno Tassone, whose ancestors are Italians and has no family connections to Syria, was killed in the city of Raqqa on December 21st.

According to Kurdish Forces he was among 4 people ambushed by ISIS militants.

Martino says the family has gotten little help from the Canadian Government so far.

“They’ve basically said he volunteered his time and that he wasn’t in an actual army.”

While the Ministry of Global Affairs is aware of the situation, negotiations are being done by the Kurds in Syria, which she says has offered to cover the costs related to recovering and returning his body to Canada.

Tassone left Canada in June. He told his family he was off to Iraq and Turkey to teach english but, Tassone was always interested in the military and news of his involvement in the fight against ISIS came as no surprise.

“He is a hero. And the pictures. The smile on his face. That is true smiles. That’s really him. They were the smiles we had seen in this house.”