Two Palestinian terrorists are set to speak at the Detroit People’s Conference for Palestine at the end of August, including a Tanzim operative who was released in February in return for hostages held by Hamas and a former Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) official.
The conference announced on Instagram late on Monday night that those who attended the August 29-31 event would be able to “hear directly about the prisoners’ struggle in Zionist prisons from [the] freed prisoner, Hussam Shaheen.”
Shaheen was released on February 1 along with hundreds of other terrorists as part of a deal in exchange for live and deceased hostages captured by Gazan forces during the October 7 massacre, according to Israeli Justice Ministry and Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) announcements.
Prior terror activity of the Detriot speakers
Once a leader and international coordinator for Fatah’s youth movement, Shaheen later became involved in the factions’ military wings. In the book The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem: Palestinian Politics and the City since 1967, it was detailed how Shaheen established an al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade cell in Jebl Mukaber and procured firearms for an aborted 2001 attack.
The Prime Minister’s Office announced in 2002 that four members of the Jebl Mukaber Martyrs’ Brigade cell admitted that Shaheen had recruited them into the terrorist organization and supplied them weapons for two failed Jerusalem terrorist attacks. Shaheen was arrested in 2004 in Ramallah and was sentenced to 27 years in prison, according to the PPS and Justice Ministry, for attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
While in prison, the now-53-year-old became an author, writing two books about his experience in prison.
Another speaker at the Detroit conference is Omar Assaf, who, according to Haaretz and Al Araby, was an official in the DFLP terrorist organization. An Omar Assaf is listed by the PLO website as one of the founders of the Marxist faction. Assaf is now the coordinator of the executive committees of the Palestinian Popular Conference, which seeks to reform the PLO into, among other things, a more radical militant organization.
A day after the October 7 massacre, Assaf’s Popular Conference praised the Gazan attackers and promised to build upon the achievements of the terrorist attack. In the October 8 Facebook post, the Popular Conference called on Palestinians to “intensify engagement” with the “Zionist Israeli enemy,” to end Palestinian Authority security coordination with Israel, to ensure the internationalization of the conflict, and to utilize all Palestinian forces to confront and eventually destroy Israel.
The late August Detroit Conference will see participation by representatives of major anti-Israel groups such as the United States Palestinian Community Network and Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as notable activists like Mahmoud Khalil and Linda Sarsour. Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib will also speak at the event, the second year in a row that Tlaib is making an appearance.
The previous year also courted terrorists as speakers, with Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member Wisam Rafeedie speaking remotely after being denied a visa. The conference’s keynote speaker was Sana’ Daqqah, wife of PFLP terrorist Walid Daqqah, who died in prison in April after commanding the PFLP cell that abducted, tortured, and murdered Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984.
The 2024 event’s main hall was named after Daqqah, who was repeatedly praised and quoted by panelists alongside terrorists such as Bassel al-Araj, Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, Udai Tamimi, former PFLP spokesperson Ghassan Kanafani, and Assata Shakur of the Black Liberation Army. The conference was officially endorsed by leading PFLP member Salah Salah in a Palestinian Youth Movement video.
Activists had repeatedly praised the October 7 massacre and advocated for armed conflict as a means of destroying the State of Israel.