Giller protesters relieved to see charges dropped, vow to continue antiwar action

Charges against four of the five people arrested for protesting at last year’s Giller Prize have been withdrawn, antiwar organizers announced Friday as they pledged to keep fighting for an end to Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

The group CanLit Responds announced the development at a press conference across from a Scotiabank Toronto branch on Friday, more than a year after protesters interrupted the literary award decrying the big bank — then a title sponsor — for its investment in Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. Scotiabank is still a Giller sponsor, though it’s no longer in the award’s title.

“As a Palestinian writer and organizer, I know that this act of protest is the bare minimum of what we can do when bunker-busting bombs are dropping on our families back home,” said Maysam Abu Khreibeh, 26, who was arrested that night.

She said the move to withdraw the charges was delayed for months, leaving her and her fellow protesters in legal limbo longer than necessary. 

“I do feel relieved to hear that the courts finally recognize that what we did is not something that should be criminalized, that the charges were withdrawn,” she said after the press conference. 

Abu Khreibeh was one of three people arrested the night of the ceremony and charged with criminal mischief and using a forged document to gain entry to the ceremony, while CanLit Responds said two others were arrested later. 

The protest took place just over a month after the war began, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 others hostage.

In response, Israel launched an assault on Gaza killing at least 44,500 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were combatants. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

This week, Amnesty International called Israel’s actions a genocide and said the Oct. 7 attacks did not justify it. Israel rejects the allegations. 

Abu Khreibeh’s lawyer, Riaz Sayani, said in a written statement that the Giller protesters never should have been charged.

“The Crown correctly withdrew the charges. It was not in the public interest to proceed, given the nature of this protest. In my view, there was also no reasonable prospect of conviction,” he said. “To mislabel this kind of protest as a criminal act has a chilling effect and undermines everyone’s right to free expression.”

In an email, Toronto Police spokeswoman Stephanie Sayer said the Crown’s decision to drop the charges “does not negate the reasonable grounds upon which charges were laid or the validity of the charges.”

CanLit Responds said charges against the fifth protester are still before the court. Toronto police say charges were filed against her in May, and she was arrested in September 2024.

Abu Khreibeh said she didn’t expect the Canadian literary community to rally around the protesters in the way many of them have. The day after she was arrested, when she was still feeling paranoid and anxious, thousands of writers signed a letter calling for the charges against the protesters to be dropped.

Since then, dozens of authors withdrew their books from consideration for the prize and many pledged to boycott the award.

They’re calling on the Giller Foundation to sever ties with Scotiabank, and for the financial institution’s subsidiary to divest from Elbit Systems.

Prize organizers have not ended any of those sponsorships but did drop Scotiabank from the name of the award. Giller Foundation Executive Director Elana Rabinovitch said the board made that change in order to keep the focus on the writers. 

Scotiabank representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

Asked to comment on the charges being dropped, Rabinovitch said the literary non-profit “fully and unequivocally supports freedom of speech, expression, dissent and the right to protest.”

Fatima Hussain, who was also arrested last November, said the last year has been jarring. 

The 24-year-old wasn’t able to travel to the U.S. to visit an ill grandparent. Nor was she allowed to speak with her co-accused while the charges were before the courts. She still can’t communicate with the final protester who was arrested. 

But still, she doesn’t regret getting involved in the protest. 

This sort of action is ingrained in her, she said. She was born in Iraq in the years between the Gulf War and Iraq War, and she said one of her earliest memories was at an antiwar protest. 

So while the arrests may have had a chilling effect on some, it won’t work on her. 

“We keep fighting because the genocide doesn’t end,” Hussain said. “People don’t stop dying. We keep going.”