Same network, new names: Terror front Samidoun secretly operates in US, Canada via proxies post-ban

The United States and Canada banned the terrorist front group Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network in October 2024, but the organization has continued to operate freely in these countries through a network of agents, shell organizations, and newly created proxy groups.

Samidoun was developed in 2011, according to its own website, out of a hunger strike led by PFLP secretary-general Ahmad Sa’adat, whose release has been a focus of Samidoun activism since its inception.

While it professes to be a network to support Palestinian prisoners and advocate for their rights and freedoms, Samidoun activism has almost exclusively been oriented toward championing operatives and leaders of the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by the EU, US, Canada, and many others for carrying out attacks such as the 1970 Dawson’s Field airplane hijackings.

Samidoun was incorporated in Vancouver as a nonprofit organization in 2021. Though designated as a terrorist entity, the organization has not yet been dissolved by Corporations Canada, leading to a campaign by B’nai Brith Canada calling on the government to initiate dissolution proceedings.

“By failing to act, Corporations Canada is enabling a listed terrorist organization to exploit federal legal protections,” read letters sent in the August 7 campaign.

The directors of Samidoun, according to Corporations Canada, are Netherlands resident Thomas Hofland, Surrey resident Dave Diewert, and Vancouver resident Charlotte Kates.

Kates, described by Samidoun as its international coordinator, has been public about her leadership role in the PFLP proxy, and continues to promote Samidoun on her social media accounts even after the October 15 ban – despite having faced legal issues following her in-person protests.

Kates was arrested by Vancouver Police in May 2024 following an April 29 rally in which she urged for the removal of PFLP, Hamas, and Hezbollah from Canada’s list of terrorist entities and led a crowd in cheers of “long live October 7.”

Charges were never filed, leading OneBC Party interim leader and Vancouver-Quilchena MLA Dallas Brodie to file a private prosecution against Kates on August 20.

Brodie argued in the sworn statement that she submitted to the court that Kates had counseled others in the commission of terrorist offenses from British Columbia, and continued to participate in terrorist group activity by attending the February Beirut funerals for former Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine.

Kates also has influence in other organizations beyond Samidoun. She is a member of the National Lawyers Guild, which has hosted events with her and other Samidoun members and defended her when she was denied entry into the Netherlands in 2022. As a representative of the NLG, Kates is listed as a member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel organizing committee. Kates was also listed as the Al-Awda Palestine Right to Return Coalition national board secretary, until she was removed from the website but not replaced, sometime between October 31 and November 7.

Israel designated Samidoun as a PFLP cutout in 2021, and the group was also banned by Germany in 2023 for supporting terrorist organizations and endorsing political violence. In October, the US and Canada took joint action against Samidoun. Then-Canadian public safety minister Dominic LeBlanc listed Samidoun as a terrorist entity, explaining that it had close links with the PFLP and advanced its interests. The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Samidoun as a “sham charity” that fundraised for the PFLP.

Along with sanctioning Samidoun, OFAC also sanctioned another Samidoun leader, Kates’s husband, Khaled Barakat.

Barakat, as explained by OFAC, serves as part of the PFLP’s leadership abroad. Palestine Today TV and Al Quds News also described him as a PFLP leader in 2017, as the terrorist organization itself has in multiple missives, such as a November 2015 statement on its website.

A Canadian citizen of Palestinian origin, Barakat once openly represented Samidoun, as demonstrated by his signature on a 2014 solidarity statement for then-arrested PFLP political wing leader Khalida Jarrar. Since his 2021 co-creation of the Masar Badil Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path, Barakat has opted to identify only as the newer group’s leader, providing a layer of obfuscation about both organizations’ affiliations.

Masar Badil seemingly has many overlaps with Samidoun, despite Barakat and Kates claiming the two organizations are unrelated. They participate in almost all of each other’s programing, such as the infamous Resistance 101 Columbia University webinar which featured both Kates and her husband. More than this, the Masar Badil executive committee is populated with Samidoun’s chief officers, making the distinction between the groups nominal. Samidoun Europe coordinator Mohammad Khatib, also described in the past by Palestinian outlets Quds News Network, the Palestinian Information Center, and Quds Press as a PFLP operative and spokesman, was on August 9 described by Masar Badil as a member of its executive committee. Samidoun Madrid coordinator Jaldia Abubakra, ex-Samidoun Germany coordinator Zaid Abdulnasser, and Samidoun Seattle coordinator Bissan Barghouti have all been listed by Masar Badil as executive committee members. Abubakra joined the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla on Sunday.

Despite Masar Badil being in many ways identical to the US-proscribed Samidoun, and Barakat’s own sanctioning and banning in the US, the group still operates in America. Masar Badil sent a delegation to New York City on July 10 to meet with the Iranian mission to the UN to show solidarity with the Islamic regime during its war with Israel. The delegation included Masar Badil executive member Barghouti, who gave a statement to the Iranian ambassador informing him that the organization had launched a campaign to advocate for the removal of all US Middle East bases – with Israel included as the largest US military base.

The delegation and statement also included the Tariq El-Tahrir Youth and Student Network, the Masar Badil youth movement, which operates freely in both Canada and the US.

Founded during the October 3-7 fourth annual Masar Badil conference in Madrid, Tariq El-Tahrir, the youth wing of the PFLP proxy, is not well known but has somehow become a ubiquitous connection among the various North American Palestinian prisoner-themed groups that have sprung forth in the wake of Samidoun’s October 15 ban.

According to a May 12 introductory Instagram post, Tariq El-Tahrir has members in the US and Canada.

In Canada, around 15 Tariq El-Tahrir masked activists blocked the entrance to the Toronto Israeli Consulate with a May 15 protest, according to a May 19 statement on the group’s website. While the new group’s achievements are still few, perhaps its most effective project has been a campaign calling for the release of Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions and PFLP member Georges Abdallah.

The release of Abdallah, imprisoned in France for his involvement in the 1982 murders of a US military attaché and Israeli diplomat, was one of the flagship missions of Samidoun, and the banner was raised by Tariq El-Tahrir in countries where Samidoun itself couldn’t carry it.

As part of the campaign, the youth movement provided other organizations with printable graphics and posters to use in protests in North America, which were used in particular by certain organizations created after October 2024. The main graphic, which features the silhouette of a keffiyeh-clad Abdallah with the words “Free Georges Abdallah,” is the exact same one used by Samidoun and its affiliates for years, though the version offered by the youth group removed the Samidoun logo. However, Tariq El-Tahrir forgot to remove the Samidoun logo for the button graphic version offered on its website.

Another Samidoun activist element used again by Tariq El-Tahrir during the campaign was a screening of Fedayin: Georges Abdallah’s Fight, a documentary that features Barakat and Kates.

One of the organizations that answered this Tariq El-Tahrir call to action was Nidal Seattle, which hosted the Fedayin screening on June 15 and had it promoted on the Samidoun website – though Samidoun was emphatic that the event was independently organized and that Samidoun was “not an organizer of these events and actions.” Yet the screening is just the tip of Nidal Seattle’s deep connections with Samidoun.

Nidal Seattle’s leader, according to Masar Badil statements, is Barghouti, the same Barghouti who is a member of the Masar Badil executive committee and led Samidoun Seattle. Masar Badil detailed that Nidal Seattle was represented, along with itself and Tariq El-Tahrir, at Barghouti’s July 10 Iranian diplomatic mission delegation.

Barghouti’s role as Samidoun Seattle’s coordinator was well established by the organization, proudly featured in a May 20, 2024, video of her May 18 Vancouver rally speech. She often appeared as a Samidoun spokeswoman to media, such as in a November 2023 Seattle Times article on a Tacoma Port protest.

Founded sometime in May, Nidal declared in its June 3 introductory post – featuring glorification of Samidoun favorites such as Basel al-Araj and former PFLP spokesman Ghassan Kanafani – that it would “build a revolutionary culture in the West.”

As promised to the Iranian diplomat, Nidal Seattle held a July 12 “Night of Rage for Palestine” in Seattle calling for the removal of US bases in the Middle East. The march doubled as an anniversary rally for the death of Kanafani, according to a July 10 Nidal Seattle Instagram post. A Nidal Seattle August 17 protest of the Boston Consulting Group, according to an August 19 Masar Badil statement, featured a banner with the call for the removal of US Middle East bases, as well as a poster declaring “glory to the martyr [1978 coastal road massacre terrorist] Dalal Mughrabi.”

“There is no other time; the time is now,” Barghouti said, according to Masar Badil. “As the US empire and its Western allies are falling, we must continue to reclaim our rightful place in the diaspora and escalate against our enemies.”

Nidal also has a branch in NYC, which shared Tariq El-Tahrir’s CUNY 8 protest call on Instagram.

Nidal NYC hasn’t been shy about its support for terrorist organizations. It held an August 25 screening of Red Army-PFLP: Declaration of World War, and a July 28 screening of What is Hidden is Greater about the execution of the October 7 massacre. On Instagram it shared a PFLP-branded July 9 post about Kanafani and a Hamas-branded martyrdom anniversary poster for Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades commander Mohammed Deif. A June 23 post that depicted Ansar Allah, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and others marching to Jerusalem asserted that the US is the real enemy holding the Israeli gun, and praised October 7 as “the beginning of the end for Israel.”

While Samidoun Seattle disappeared almost as soon as the US sanctioned the parent organization, Nidal Seattle seemed to seamlessly begin operating in its stead, including replacing the Samidoun chapter in its constant cooperation with Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return University of Washington (SUPER UW), which joined protests such as the “Night of Rage.”

SUPER UW’s connections to the Samidoun network extend further than just a long history of joint programming with Samidoun Seattle, such as their January 6, 2024, Starbucks protest and December 16, 2023, Westlake Center protest.

A May 3, 2023, GZ Radio article about the April 17, 2023, launch of the local Samidoun chapter stated that many of the branch’s activists were affiliated with SUPER UW and the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) – the latter of which often invited Kates and Barakat as conference speakers.

One activist seen speaking alongside Barghouti at an August 25 rally, Alon Lapid, was described in a January 11, 2024, Fight Back News article as a Samidoun Seattle organizer, and in a July 14, 2023, Samidoun statement as a SUPER UW member.

SUPER UW’s Instagram account prominently features links to the accounts of Masar Badil, Tariq El-Tahrir, and ILPS in its biography section.

Following the US OFAC sanctioning of Samidoun and Barakat, SUPER UW issued an October 26 Instagram statement in support of both and organized an October 23 Henry Jackson Federal Building protest to “defend Samidoun.”

Even after the Samidoun ban, SUPER UW on April 25 hosted Samidoun Europe coordinator, Masar Badil, executive committee member, and PFLP agent Khatib to speak to students via Zoom. The group also issued a statement of support for Khatib on April 22, after Belgium arrested him ahead of revoking his refugee status in August.

SUPER UW stated in February that it participated in the international week to call for Sa’adat’s release, and appeared to have held a prisoner solidarity lecture on campus in which it taught how one could learn to organize from the example of PFLP members. Images of tabling events show it using the same poster format as Samidoun.

The favor was returned by Tariq El-Tahrir, which prominently featured on its website SUPER UW’s campaign to defend 33 of its student activists who were suspended and arrested for occupying a campus building and setting fires to dumpsters in May. The campaign was also shared by Samidoun in its Telegram group and on Nidal Seattle’s Instagram.

Many other groups besides SUPER UW endorsed the campaign in support of the Washington, DC, terrorist attack, including Al-Ahrar Palestinian Prisoner Support.

Al-Ahrar New York/New Jersey first emerged on Telegram in April, but soon began to regularly post official PFLP statements and share the literature of PFLP cell commander Walid Daqqah. It only began posting on Instagram on May 14 – a cross-post with Tariq El-Tahrir, Nidal Seattle, Nidal NYC, and SUPER UW.

Even before it posted its introductory mission statement, the group participated in the Masar Badil Georges Abdallah campaign and screened Fedayin on June 15. The group also shared a now-deleted July 25 Nidal NYC post celebrating Abdallah’s release, which was complete with a PFLP logo.

When Tariq El-Tahrir called for protests for the CUNY 8, Al-Ahrar joined Nidal NYC in sharing the call to action.

While Samidoun NY/NJ disappeared on October 15, a new ally appeared to have emerged with PFLP-inspired messaging. With familiar rhetoric, Al-Ahrar announced itself as a new organization on June 15 and explained that it is dedicated to advocating for Palestinian prisoners, citing Kanafani to demonstrate the importance of the mission. While noting that it is a new group, it added that its “members have been doing solidarity work with Palestinian prisoners internationally for years.”

While new, Al-Ahrar seemed to join Nidal as one of the principal actors in Tariq El-Tahrir’s May 15 global protests marking 77 years since the “Nakba.” The New York City protest hosted by Al-Ahrar featured a lecture by Samidoun leader Kates and a “recently freed Palestinian prisoner.” Other groups worked with Tariq El-Tahrir to hold May 15 protests in Montreal, Ottawa, Abbotsford, and Toronto.

On August 15, Samidoun announced on Telegram that Al-Ahrar had launched a Toronto chapter website. The introductory website post shared inspirations from various PFLP figures such as Sa’adat and PFLP terrorist Aisha Odeh, and called for a rejection of liberal activism that endorses peace and nonviolence.

Al-Ahrar Toronto participated in a “people’s fair” on August 23, according to photographs it shared of the Canada chapter distributing pamphlets declaring “Canada is fake” and a poster emblazoned with the PFLP logo. The distribution of the Hamas booklet “Our Narrative: Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” at the fair was not out of character for the chapter, which offers the terrorist literature for download from its website, along with a Lions’ Den magazine, to support “free and easy distribution” of the materials as physical copies.

While many Samidoun chapter social media accounts have ceased to function, Samidoun Vancouver has continued to post on X, primarily sharing statements by its parent organization or events by Canada Palestine Association.

CPA had operated for decades before Samidoun was created; but since Samidoun’s formation, CPA has collaborated on a multitude of projects with Samidoun for years. This included a January 2020 ILPS panel about Sa’adat with Kates, Barakat, and CPA head Hanna Kawas. CPA appeared to form a new subcommittee by July, which has emerged as a major defender of Samidoun in Vancouver.

The necessity of CPA creating the Basel al-Araj Prisoner Committee (named for a terrorist who died in a gunfight with the Israel Police Counterterrorism Unit in 2017) is unclear, but the group explains in its Instagram biography that it organizes “around Palestinian prisoner’s role in revolutionary struggle.” The CPA subcommittee’s rhetoric indicates that it is ideologically aligned with PFLP proxy groups. The committee explained its fascination with Araj in a July 15 Instagram cross-post with Nidal Seattle and Nidal NYC.

According to local sources, Diewert frequents Basel al-Araj committee events, speaking about the legacy of Daqqah at a July 29 vigil. The promotional image for the vigil for fallen terrorists and Iranian leaders was also emblazoned with the Al-Ahrar logo.

This isn’t the only interaction the committee has had with Al-Ahrar in the group’s short history. It shared on social media Al-Ahrar Toronto’s explanation of the importance of Palestinian prisoners in anti-Israel activism.

The Araj committee has been supportive of Samidoun figures, besides providing Diewert with a platform. On August 7 it joined Nidal Seattle in an Instagram statement of solidarity with Khatib after his refugee status was revoked by Belgium. When Brodie held her Vancouver courthouse press conference announcing a private prosecution against Kates, the Al-Araj committee organized a protest.

The committee’s first Instagram post on July 14 was to promote a Georges Abdallah protest the same day, using one of Tariq El-Tahrir’s posters. Demonstrating the Masar Badil youth group’s influence in Vancouver, at the French Consulate protest the al-Araj Committee used the flags from Tariq El-Tahrir’s toolkit, and later urged others to join the youth movement’s campaign.

While Samidoun Vancouver may not be organizing in the city, it has friends that are furthering its messaging.

While the US and Canada eventually took action against Samidoun, it appears that activists in both countries simply started new organizations with different names but the same purpose.

Masar Badil, Tariq El-Tahrir, Nidal, and SUPER UW have clear ties through Samidoun’s organizational network. These organizations have been visibly operating within the US and Canada and, at the very least, have been ideologically influencing and working with other activist groups.

As these groups openly advocate for violence as a just measure to solve political problems and advocate on behalf of terrorist organizations, if American and Canadian leaders wish to prevent the next Washington embassy shooting, they can’t rest on the laurels of their October 15 legal action.