Palestinian Activist Convicted of Lying to U.S. About Israeli Terror Bombing
A Palestinian activist was found guilty on Monday of immigration fraud for failing to reveal to U.S. authorities that she had been convicted and served time in Israel for a 1969 supermarket bombing that killed two people.
After a trial last week in a federal court in Detroit, Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, 67, was convicted of unlawful procurement of naturalization, said Ron Hansen, a spokesman for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Odeh faces 10 years in prison and would lose her U.S. citizenship. Supporters rallied on her behalf outside the federal courthouse. They say she has been unfairly targeted by the U.S. government for her views on Israel.
Odeh has lived almost two decades in the United States and served as associate director of a Chicago-area community organization called the Arab American Action Network.
Federal prosecutors said she failed to reveal her criminal history when she immigrated from Jordan in 1995 and again when she was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2004.
Odeh and members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were convicted by an Israeli military court for the supermarket bombing and for placing a bomb at the British Consulate in Jerusalem.
Odeh’s attorneys could not be immediately reached for comment.
