According to Barbara Bedont, Alkhdour’s lawyer, the charges come from a protest that took place last Thursday in front of the Liberal campaign office, with Miller nearby. Bedont said Alkhdour was packing her belongings after the protest, when Miller showed up in a vehicle. She said Alkhdour approached the vehicle and “expressed her feelings about his policies.” “They said ‘shame on you’ and ‘you’re a child killer.’ Things like that — political speech,” the lawyer said, adding that Miller was in the vehicle the whole time before it drove off. She said the interaction lasted about five seconds, with Alkhdour standing about a metre away from the vehicle, and the other two people charged standing further back. “At no time was he ever threatened,” Bedont said. “There was no violence. It was a purely peaceful expression of her political views.”

Alkhdour’s protests began shortly after the death of her 13-year-old daughter, Jana Elkahlout, who was born with cerebral palsy. Alkhdour, her husband and two of her children moved to Quebec in 2019, and started the process of bringing Jana to Canada, after she was forced to stay in Gaza due to the unavailability of safe ambulance travel between there and Egypt. After years of trying to get her daughter to come to Canada, the family finally received the green light from the federal government in January, but Jana was already dead.