The lawyer representing pro-Palestinian activists accused of criminal harassment toward Immigration Minister Marc Miller believes the charges represent an attempt to "criminalize free speech." Miller pauses while speaking to reporters at the Liberal caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C., Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
MONTREAL – The lawyer representing pro-Palestinian activists accused of criminal harassment toward federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller says the charges are an attempt to “criminalize free speech.”
Barbara Bedont says her three clients were protesting outside a Liberal byelection campaign office in Montreal’s Verdun borough last week when they saw Miller and two of his employees in a car and confronted them.
One of the accused, Samar Elkahlout – who is also known as Samar Alkhdour – had been trying to bring her daughter to Canada earlier this year, but the 13-year-old died in the Gaza Strip before permission was granted.
Since then she has held regular sit-ins outside Miller’s Montreal office in protest of the Canadian government’s policies on Palestinian refugees.
She and two others were charged with criminal harassment and mischief for allegedly damaging the car that Miller and the two employees were in, and were given conditions today that include a requirement to stay at least 50 metres away from them.
Bedont says the conditions are a “compromise” that put limits on the accused while still allowing them to continue their protests, including outside the door of Miller’s office when he and the two employees aren’t there.
But the lawyer denies her clients caused any damage to the car and says they shouldn’t have been charged at all, noting that the right to free speech and protest are protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
