Samidoun leader Charlotte Kates assisted a British law firm filing an application seeking to delist Hamas as a “proscribed,” or banned, terror group in the United Kingdom, she says.
“It’s an honour to have contributed to this critically important application … against the criminalization of Palestinian resistance in Britain, the imperial power responsible for Zionist colonialism in Palestine,” Kates posted on X last Wednesday.
The military wing of Hamas was classified a terror organization in the United Kingdom in 2001. The definition was
two decades later to the entire organization, including the political arm.
Kates was contacted by Riverway Law to submit an “
” citing her involvement with Samidoun, a Vancouver-based group she co-founded with her husband that describes its mission as advocating for Palestinian prisoners. Samidoun was designated a terror entity by the Canadian government
because of its ties to another terror group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Kates has become an outspoken supporter of Hamas in Canada,
public chants of “Long Live October 7.” She has called the atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel “heroic and brave.” In February, she attended the public funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon, memorializing the terror leader as a “great anti-imperialist leader of our day, the great Arab and international revolutionary, the beloved speaker of truth and warrior of justice.”
It is such an honor to be here in Beirut today, one among a sea of over a million people in collective tribute, mourning, love and commitment to the road of resistance and liberation exemplified by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Sayyed Hisham Safieddine. pic.twitter.com/TxxEDkocsN
— Charlotte Kates 🔻 (@charlottekates) February 23, 2025
A witness statement attached to Riverway’s application by Mousa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas political leader living in Qatar, rejected allegations that the terror group is antisemitic despite its original founding charter
: “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” Marzouk, who was formative in
laying the foundations of Hamas’s political infrastructure
in America, countered that subsequent Hamas policy documents had clarified “our struggle is not against Jewish people because of their religion but against the Zionists who occupy Palestine.”
“Hamas is of the view that the ‘Jewish problem,’ antisemitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage,” Marzouk stated later in the document.
Alongside its submission, Riverway Law argues in a series of
that Hamas’s terror listing runs “contrary to the European Court of Human Rights” and is “disproportionate.” The firm released a video on X of its legal team delivering the application to U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, saying they were “instructed by Hamas” to do so.
Today, our legal team submitted the application to the Home office to remove Hamas from the banned list of organisations under UK Counter terrorism powers
You can read the full legal application here: https://t.co/Zxov8lhle8 pic.twitter.com/b7N07fuH5X
— Riverway Law (@riverwaylaw) April 9, 2025
“The reality is that (Hamas) poses no threat to the U.K. people and have been explicit about this,” the firm wrote without referencing the
killed in the October 7 attacks.
Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary for the opposition Conservative party, said Hamas shows no respect for human rights and has oppressed Palestinians living in Gaza for too long, the Guardian reported.
“Hamas is an evil Iranian-backed terrorist organization, which kidnaps, tortures and murders people, including British nationals. They pose an ongoing threat to our security and to the peace and stability of the Middle East and they have weapons and training facilities that put lives at risk and threaten our interests,” she said.
“A whole host of legal and mental gymnastics were provided by the head of the law firm to explain why their actions are legitimate and how this is somehow a valid pathway to ending the bloodshed in Gaza and responding to the daily scenes of murdered Palestinian children,” Palestinian-American researcher
, an outspoken critic of Hamas, wrote on X following the news.
“None of these individuals, including those at the law firm, bothered to understand that Hamas is the very root of the destruction of Gaza and the collapse of the Palestinian national project, having served the interests of the far right and the anti-Palestinian forces within Israeli politics and society.”
The announcement was applauded by the
Socialist Lawyers’ Association of Ireland
.
Riverway Law clarified that the legal submission on behalf of Hamas was completed
because it could not accept money from the group without violating British law.
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