Authorities detained the human rights expert Richard Falk and his wife, scholar Hilal Elver, as they entered Canada for a conference on that nation’s complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Richard Falk, then special rapporteur on occupied Palestine, in June 2013, when, in presenting his latest report, he said that the Palestinian right of self-determination had been deferred and denied for far too long. (UN Photo/Jean Marc Ferré)
By Jon Queally
Common Dreams
Ninety-five-year-old Richard Falk — world renowned scholar of international law and former U.N. special rapporteur focused on Palestinian rights — was detained and interrogated for several hours along with his wife, legal scholar Hilal Elver, as the pair entered Canada for a conference focused on that nation’s complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“A security person came and said, ‘We’ve detained you both because we’re concerned that you pose a national security threat to Canada,’” Falk explained to Al-Jazeera in a Saturday interview from Ottawa in the wake of the incident at the international airport in Toronto ahead of the scheduled event.
“It was my first experience of this sort–ever–in my life,” said Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author or editor of more than 20 books, and formerly the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories.
Falk, who is American, has been an outspoken critic of the foreign policy of Canada, the United States and other Western nations on the subject of Israel-Palestine as well as other issues.
He told media outlets that he and his wife, also an American, were held for over four hours after their arrival in Toronto. They were in the country to speak and participate at the Palestine Tribunal on Canadian Responsibility, an event scheduled for Friday and Saturday in Ottawa, the nation’s capital.
Hilal Elver, then special U.N. rapporteur on the right to food, briefing journalists in 2017. (UN Photo/Evan Schneider)
The event, according to the program notes on the website, was designed to “document the multiple ways that Canadian entities – including government bodies, corporations, universities, charities, media, and other cultural institutions–have enabled and continue to enable the settler colonization and genocide of Palestinians, and to articulate what justice and reparations would require.”
Two powerful days of testimony at the Palestine Tribunal on Canadian Responsibility in Ottawa. From survivors in Gaza, from family in Canada, from international legal experts, lawyers, academics, human rights researchers, journalists, student activists, and others, a clear… pic.twitter.com/TLuoDOStrr
— Alex Neve (@AlexNeve24) November 16, 2025
In his comments to Al-Jazeera, Falk said he believes the interrogation by the Canadian authorities — which he described as “nothing particularly aggressive” but “random” and “disorganized” in its execution — is part of a global effort by powerful nations complicit with human rights abuses and violations of international law to “punish those who endeavour to tell the truth about what is happening” in the world, including in Gaza.
Martin Shaw, a British sociologist and author of The New Age of Genocide, said the treatment of Falk and Elver should be seen as an “extraordinary development” for Canada, and not in a good way.
For a nation that likes to think of itself as a “supporter of international justice,” said Shaw, “to arrest the veteran scholar and former UN rapporteur Richard Falk while he is attending a Gaza tribunal. Clearly, the international repression of the Palestinian cause knows no bounds.”
Canadian Senator Yuen Pau Woo, a supporter of the Palestine Tribunal, told Al-Jazeera he was “appalled” by the interrogation.
“We know they were here to attend the Palestine Tribunal. We know they have been outspoken in documenting and publicizing the horrors inflicted on Gaza by Israel, and advocating for justice,” Woo said.
“If those are the factums for their detention, then it suggests that the Canadian government considers these acts of seeking justice for Palestine to be national security threats – and I’d like to know why.”
Jon Queally is managing editor of Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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People might gain a very good idea of how far down the so-called “civilized world” has descended when the 95-year-old law professor and peace advocate Richard Falk and his legal scholar wife are treated like common criminals.
Outrageous may not be a strong enough adjective for describing such irrational, Fascistic schoolyard-bully treatment of widely respected academics.
As a Canadian I can only observe that we have been a lackey of the United States for decades. Our latest Prime Minister puts on a great show but is an international banker and has only one goal. Maintain the present system and lead Canada further in to the rabbit hole of war and poverty. Why are we ‘providing arms and funds to Israel and Ukraine? If we are going down this destructive path we should just bite the bullet and decouple from America.
We have two other neighbours-China and Russia. Obviously not as close but certainly more honorable. I have lobbied for joining BRICS but based on our background they probably wouldn’t want us.
The West is dying and our governments are doing a good job of accelerating our death.
I was bon in the good times and unfortunately will die in the worst of times
Unsurprising from the country whose Indian Act was the basis for much of South Africa’s apartheid laws and by extension Israel’s today. Canada still has racial laws that separate people into two categories, afforded different rights and privileges, and like in Israel you may have to find the birth certificate of your great grandmother if you want to prove which one you are. One of my relatives here (being from an immigrant family) is married to a Canadian who pays differently for rent because of their race.
Further, Canada has Ukrainian Nazi war memorials and statues throughout it and in high levels of government. British Palestine famously received about 70% of its trade from the Third Reich. But very few have read the book “Zionism in the Age of Dictators” (hxxps://marxists.org/history/etol/document/mideast/agedict/ch05.htm) to be aware of any of this history, which is suppressed.
In Canada, it is considered “hate crime” to mark with graffiti an SS memorial as a “Nazi war memorial”; the police will investigate, then claim whoever reports it truthfully spreads “misinformation.” Source: hxxps://theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/17/canada-nazi-monument-vandalism-hate-crime
The celebration of this 21st century Holocaust should then be no surprise, as it still glorifies as a country those who committed the 20th century Holocaust. Canada is thoroughly rotten, and if it is to end its support for the genocide, it needs denazification; at least as much as Ukraine or the Baltic states. Unfortunately I doubt it is up to the task.
Shame!
Does Canada allow a lawyer under these circumstances?