On November 22, Canadian police conducted coordinated pre-dawn raids on seven homes across the greater Toronto area and made 10 arrests. They broke doors, ordered suspects out of their beds, and went on to completely ransack every single room and confiscate computers, cars and other private property, in some cases in the presence of terrified children and the elderly.

Looking at its ferocity and size, involving dozens of officers and presumably costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, you could be excused to think the raids were part of a massive counter-terror operation or targeting high-level, violent and hard-to-pin-down drug dealers and gang members.

Shockingly, this was not the case.

The suspects, known to their supporters collectively as “the Peace 11” – including one that was arrested separately on November 14, were professors, community organisers, legal workers and labour activists, targeted for the ostensibly dangerous offences of plastering posters and splattering washable red paint on the window of a Toronto branch of the Indigo book store chain. They had taken action against the store, like hundreds of others across Canada, to protest the material support Indigo’s owners have long been providing to the Israeli military.

For their transgressions, the 11 suspects were all charged with “Mischief (property damage) over $5000” and criminal harassment. Ten of them were further charged with “conspiracy to commit an indictable offence”. If the prosecutor decides to proceed by way of indictment, which is a very real option, the accused can receive prison sentences of up to 10 years.

Considering the suspects caused no physical harm to anyone, posed no imminent threat to society, and displayed no flight risk, why did the police, who had........

© Al Jazeera