Canadian border authorities interrogated and denied entry the director of the Muslim Association of Britain, who was due to visit the country, after he praised aspects of the October 7 attacks as “important resistance”.
Immigration officials in Montreal had questioned Anas Altikriti, a dual British-Iraqi national, at the city’s main airport for 11 hours before escorting him to a London-bound return flight, per the Telegraph.
Altikriti, a former Guardian columnist, had planned to speak at a Muslim Association of Canada convention in Toronto on May 16-18.
In a statement, the Muslim Association of Canada said that the Canadian government had committed a “serious overreach,” driven by “bad-faith pressure from those seeking to suppress voices speaking out against Israel’s crimes and the genocide in Gaza”.
Altikriti has described the allegations of mass rape on October 7 as “a lie” and called the taking of hostages on that day “a very important part” of any “act of resistance,” in a video recorded with Tom Facchine, a US-based imam, in November 2023, per the report.
He said: “The taking of hostages is a very important part of any strategic sort of military action or act of resistance or the like, because for every hostage you can then negotiate.”
On X, Altikriti also posted comments that justified the massacres, in which Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 people.
“What did we think was going to happen? That Palestinians would stay silent whilst forever subjugated, victimised, abused, violated, murdered and tortured?! This is for every time Western governments stayed silent and whitewashed Israel’s crimes and violations,” he wrote.
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