A Vancouver activist facing a police hate speech investigation has surfaced in Iran, where she praised Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Charlotte Kates of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network appeared recently on Iranian state television; she spoke about being arrested in Vancouver and referred to Western democracy as a “lie.”
Vancouver police arrested Kates, 44, and initiated their investigation in April after she appeared at a Pro-Palestinian demonstration at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Speaking to the crowd, Kates described the Hamas Oct. 7 attack on Israel — which killed about 1,200 people, the majority of whom were civilians — as “heroic and brave.”
Kates then led the crowd in a chant of “Long live October 7th,” and called for the delisting of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and several other groups as terrorist organizations, praising them as “heroes.”
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Photos recently posted online show Kates accepting a “human rights award” from the Iranian government on Aug. 4.
“I spoke about the brave, heroic October 7 operation and the legitimacy of the resistance,” Kates said, dedicating the award to the “martyrs and prisoners of Palestine.”
Reached at her home on Friday, Kates denied she was a security threat and refused to discuss her status in Canada.
“The only security threat that is facing the world today is the Zionist genocide being carried out in Palestine against the Palestinian people that has slaughtered at least 40,000 Palestinians and that the Canadian government continues to support and that the United States continues to arm,” she said.
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. was actually listed as a terrorist entity in Canada back in June — now she met with Mohseni-Eje’i who is the head of Iran’s judiciary,” Negar Mojtahedi a journalist with Iran Internationa, told Global News.
“(He) is an individual who in 2011 was actually sanctioned by the U.S. government. This is the same individual who presided over, as the head of the Iran judiciary, over the arrest of tens of thousands of Women Life Freedom protesters, who were, many of them, executed.”
Kates was also part of the now-dismantled pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of British Columbia in April.
She was released following her April arrest and has not been charged with any crime.
The BC Civil Liberties Association condemned her arrest and suggested Vancouver police had conflated political speech with hate speech.
Kates is a graduate of Rutgers Law School in the U.S. Her status in Canada is unclear.
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