I was arrested and almost put on trial for making a TikTok about Palestine. Here's the story.

You're not reading that wrong. I was arrested and nearly faced trial for making a TikTok about Palestine. My crime? Apparently uttering threats to bomb then-Minister of Immigration Marc Miller's office. You might be saying, wow that's kinda serious, when did Davide say that? Apparently in a Tik Tok I posted on May 24th 2024. You can watch the entire video embedded in this post, I apparently uttered the threat in the last few seconds.

My arrest and the “evidence”

On the week of May 27, I was arrested at my home in Montreal by the Montreal police, the SPVM. I was told by the two officers that I was being charged with “uttering threats” to Member of Parliament and Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship of Canada, Marc Miller, because I called for “blowing up” his office.

At the end of the video, I say, "It would also be great if you, I don't know, call or email or fax or just, you know, blow up Marc Miller's office to make sure he, his workers, they can't get anything done." Now, to me and most English speakers, it’s clear I was using a very common expression. But apparently, this was seen as evidence enough to put forward charges against me.

The conditions of my arrest were that I do not own any weapons, I cannot contact Miller directly or indirectly, be within 300 meters of his home or work, or contact his employees. Those were standard, but the crazy part was regarding social media. I was told I was not allowed to post any commentary or videos on any social media. Finally, I was given a first appearance in January 2025, meaning that my conditions would be enforced until then.

Luckily, I was not handcuffed or taken away from my home. I was told they would process the arrest on the spot, and they did. I went upstairs to contact a lawyer and then went back down to complete the process. What happened next was that I was stuck for the entire summer of 2024, being unable to post anything out of fear of breaking my conditions. In September 2024, my lawyer was able to get in contact with the police detective on my case, and she agreed the conditions were too vague. The SPVM rewrote my conditions, allowing me to post but just not about Marc Miller or his employees.

It's important to note that these blanket conditions of no posting on social media, which are essentially gag orders, have been deemed by a Quebec judge to be unconstitutional (see R. c. Banville, 2024 QCCQ 7704). Activists have rightly been fighting against these conditions, as they’re against the right to the presumption of innocence. We saw the SPVM tried to do the same thing with Yves Engler recently, and I know of dozens of instances in which these are the conditions pushed onto arrestees.

At my first hearing in January, I would finally get to see all the evidence from the police...and the video was literally all of it. A video of me using a common idiom was the evidence of me apparently calling to blow up a Member of Parliament's office. I had made TikToks about Samar’s protests before, some of them having more views than others, but frankly barely over 1,000 (which is nothing for TikTok).

From my perspective, the case was ridiculous for obvious reasons. To “blow up” something is a common idiom used in English, in particular when it comes to discussing overwhelming communication systems such as phones. In some cases, an older speaker or non-native speaker might not know the expression, but given that I am literally referring to phones, fax, and emails in the same sentence, it’s comical that anyone went forward with these charges.

In my opinion, the fact that my video was seriously taken to be a threat is more a product of the broader context of anti-Palestinian repression currently taking place in Canada. The only reason this video became the focus of the police and eventually the Crown was likely because Samar shared the video, and I know her social media is monitored. I would find out it was in fact one of Marc Miller’s employees that informed the police about my TikTok, leading to my arrest and charges.

Wider context of my case

The contents and surrounding context of the video are extremely relevant to the entire case. The TikTok was in reference to the protests that were then ongoing at Marc Miller's office on Saint-Jacques in Montreal by Palestinian mother Samar Alkhdour. If you're not from Montreal or Canada, you likely haven't heard Samar's story, which is sadly not an uncommon one. Samar left Palestine for the US in 2017 on a Fulbright scholarship to study a master's, but her husband was denied permission to leave Gaza by the Zionist authorities. She made the decision to leave her eldest daughter, Jana, in the care of her husband in Gaza, as she could not take care of three children on her own.

Jana had cerebral palsy, and the process of safely getting to Canada was difficult. Since relocating to Montreal in 2019, Samar hoped to finally bring her daughter in by going through the grueling visa process in Canada. Now, anyone who has spoken to refugees, immigrants, international students, etc., knows this process with the IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) s anything but quick and efficient. Despite the international reputation, we know Canada isn't some safe haven rushing to save people from global disasters (unless, as we’ll see, you're white).

Thus, it took several years for Samar to hear back about whether her daughter could be brought in. Finally, in January 2024. the government told Samar that Jana was greenlit to come to Montreal. But it was too late, she died two weeks earlier due to malnutrition.

Let's be clear about what happened. She was murdered by Zionists. After October 7th, due to Israel's genocidal 'total' blockade of food, electricity, and fuel, Samar's family was unable to get Jana the food and medicine she needed to survive. This is sadly one of literally thousands of stories that make up Israel's crimes of genocide and settler-colonial violence. This is what Samar, myself, and others were protesting. This is the wider context of my arrest.

Samar was then (and is still) protesting, among other things, Canada's discriminatory refugee policies towards Gazans. The Ministry of Immigration's policies were so objectively racist towards Palestinians when compared to the treatment of Ukrainians.¹ For Gazans, there was a limit of 1000 visas being approved, for Ukrainians there was no limit and nearly 1 million approved. Gazans must be related to a Canadian citizen or PR to apply, Ukraininans need no such relation. And most telling, there was no turn timeline for turnaround of applications for Gazans. For Ukrainians, 14-days was the guranteed standard.

My (almost) trial date

On March 17th, my trial date arrived. It seemed for a while that my trial was possibly going to be pushed back, as the prosecution wanted to call witnesses and provide new evidence that was not yet available. After a long morning of back and forth between the prosecution and my lawyer, the judge acquitted me. Needless to say, I was super happy.

I’ll never know for sure why the judge dropped my case so suddenly when it seemed almost certain they were going to approve a postponement. My guess was that they could tell the prosecution was disorganized and trying to stall for more evidence. But that’s just a hunch.

The prosecutor, right before the acquittal, actually said there might be additional charges against me. However, my lawyer informed me after that the Crown can't charge me again for a similar crime with the same case due to the Kienapple principle:

The Kienapple principle, also known as the rule against multiple convictions, is a rule in law that is named after the case where it was created. This law states that a person cannot be convicted of two offences that are as a result of the same act.

Conslusion: I’ll take the win

I want to thank everyone: my beautiful partner, who was always there supporting me; all the comrades who provided moral, political, and legal advice and support; my amazing lawyers, who fought my conditions and unjust suppression; and all the comrades who showed up for me, including Samar herself. The past few months have been more annoying than stressful. I didn't ever think the case against me was solid, but nonetheless, I had to waste hundreds of dollars in legal fees and lost work, all to fight this paper tiger of a case. Between this, being sick, deciding on graduate school, it's been a stressful few months. But I can say that thankfully, I've come out of this experience with more knowledge and drive to fight—against Zionism, Canadian imperialism, and growing repression.

As Zionists have begun bombing Gaza again in the most brutal and visible genocide in the 21st century, I will not be bullied and scared into staying silent on how our state institutions—the police, the province, the federal government—are all aiding and abetting in these crimes. The suppression we are facing is intensifying, but it’s nothing close to what those resisting on the ground are facing, and we owe it to them to keep fighting. Frankly, I'm still ashamed that I was silent for this long. But I'm ready now to do all that I can to fight back, and more importantly, to work with others to create a force against tyranny.

Glory to the resistance and the people of Palestine

1. An interesting side note, I actually remember being at a conference before October 7th where a refugee scholar was talking about the unprecedented openness of the policies towards Ukrainians by the liberal government. There has simply never in the history of refugee policies in Canada been such effort put in getting people into the country. I will leave it to the readers to decide why that’s the case.