Canadian senator demands deportation of PFLP terrorist

Khaled Barakat has been living in Canada off and on for the last 20 years.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A Canadian senator demanded Tuesday that a Palestinian terrorist who has been living in the country intermittently for some two decades be deported.

Senator Leo Housakos of the opposition Conservative party took the opportunity during the Senate Question Period to request that the government expel Khaled Barakat, who currently resides in Vancouver.

Barakat’s presence in the country was exposed last week by the National Post, which cited information from Israeli intelligence sources that Barakat is a senior, active member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Quoting the paper, the parliamentarian from Quebec noted that “Barakat has been living in Canada off and on for the past 20 years; for the last two years he has been splitting his time between Vancouver and our home city of Montreal.”

Housakos asked why the Trudeau government allows the 51-year-old terrorist — who has been “barred from the United States [and] barred from Germany” — to stay, “despite Canadian law that forbids any individual with connections to terrorist organizations from entering our country.”

In response, Senator Marc Gold said that the government was aware of Barakat’s identity, that it has a “robust” system for identifying those who should be barred from the country, but that he “could not comment on specific cases such as the one that you’ve identified.”

Housakos then followed up by referencing B’nai Brith Canada’s efforts to alert government officials and law enforcement agencies about Barakat.

For over two years, the Jewish organization has been sending proof of Barakat’s active terrorist ties. These include instances of Arab-language media describing him as a member of the PFLP’s central committee and articles he has published while in Canada calling for acts of international terrorism targeting Israeli and “Zionist” targets beyond the Middle East.

The organization said that no government source has ever responded after given the information.

Housakos asked, “How is the Jewish community in Canada supposed to take seriously your government’s claim to be committed to fighting anti-Semitism if it allows this man to remain in Canada?”

In turn, Gold repeated that he could not comment on specific cases, but “Canadians should remain satisfied that this government takes allegations of this kind…most seriously.”

Canada officially lists the PFLP as a terrorist organization, as does the United States, the EU, Japan, Australia and Israel. The Marxist-Leninist terror group, founded in 1967, has been responsible over the decades for hundreds of terrorist attacks in Israel, including the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001.

One attack specifically noted by the senator was an assault on a western Jerusalem synagogue in 2014. Two Palestinians burst into the building during morning prayers and attacked worshippers with a gun, axes and knives. Five Jews were killed and a Druze police officer later died in a shootout with the terrorists. Canadian-Israeli Rabbi Howie Rothman lay in a coma for nearly a year before finally succumbing to his injuries.