No charges laid against director of Vancouver-based terror organization Samidoun
Charlotte Lynn Kates is a key member of Samidoun and was arrested at a rally in April
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The provincial government has not laid criminal charges against the director of a terrorist organization almost six months after being asked to by Vancouver police.
On Wednesday, the B.C. Prosecution Service confirmed it was still reviewing a report from the Vancouver Police Department on 44-year-old Charlotte Lynn Kates.
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“This process is continuing and I am unable to provide a timeline for completion,” said spokesperson Damienne Darby.
Darby did provide Postmedia News with a copy of the prosecution service’s hate crimes policy.
VPD spokesperson Sgt. Steve Addison said police provided the report to prosecutors in June, two months after Kates was arrested at a rally at the Vancouver Art Gallery organized by Samidoun.
Samidoun was declared a terrorist organization by Canada and the U.S. on Oct. 15 on the grounds that it raises money for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — an organization outlawed in the U.S. since 1997 and Canada since 2003.
Kates is one of three directors of Samidoun, which is registered at an east Vancouver address and has been active in Vancouver and Europe protesting Israel’s retaliatory actions after the Hamas terrprist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In April, the VPD opened a criminal investigation into Kates claiming she made hateful comments at the art gallery protest, calling the attack by Hamas on Israel “heroic and brave” and leading demonstrators in a chant “Long live Oct. 7.”
Kates was arrested and ordered not to attend any more protests, rallies or assemblies until an October court date. But she was allowed to travel and visited Iran in August.
According to Postmedia News columnist Terry Glavin, Kates arrived in Vancouver about 12 years ago after an internal dispute among pro-Palestine activists at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Kates’s husband is Khaled Barakat, who was born in the village of Dahiyat al-Barid near Jerusalem in 1971. He was deported from the U.S. when his residency permit expired in 2003 and later came to Vancouver as a Palestinian student activist at UBC in 2004.
Barakat is considered to be a terrorist in the U.S. and is alleged to part of the leadership of the PFLP.
Addison would not confirm what the charges against Kates were that the department had recommended to prosecutors.
The prosecution service’s hate crime policy says charges related to antisemitic hate crimes must be approved by the B.C. Attorney General or the Assistant Deputy Attorney General (the lead public servant in the Attorney General’s office).
Attorney General Niki Sharma’s office refused to provide a response, noting that “during the provincial election … government is in a caretaker mode and all government of B.C. communications are limited to critical health and public safety information, as well as statutory requirements.”
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