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Steven Emerson,
Executive Director
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March 13, 2015
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Rasmieh
Odeh Sentenced to 18 Months In Prison, Then Deportation to Jordan
IPT News
March 12, 2015
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Odeh with her
interpreter before Judge Drain (sketch by Jerry Lemenu)
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DETROIT – Rasmieh Odeh, a Palestinian woman who conceived of and led a
deadly 1969 Jerusalem bombing plot that killed two civilians, has had her
citizenship revoked
and will serve 18 months in an American prison for naturalization fraud.
Prosecutors had asked for her to serve five to seven years. Her defense
maintains even her 18-month sentence in prison is "unjust".
At Thursday's sentencing hearing, both the courtroom and media overflow
rooms were filled to capacity with over a hundred supporters from the
larger Arab American community attending the hearing. Her support base
anxiously tweeted a rolling commentary on the verbatim transcript of court
proceedings being relayed to them online. "Just
f..k the US justice system". "The
appellate judge(s) better be wiser than this douchebag"
#RasmiehOdeh.
Odeh never would have been allowed into the United States, and never
would have been naturalized as an American citizen, had immigration
officials known about the 10 years she spent in Israeli prisons for helping
bomb a Jerusalem supermarket, killing two Hebrew University students. But
Odeh, 67, failed to disclose that history, checking "no" on her
immigration and naturalization applications to questions that asked if she
had ever been arrested, convicted or imprisoned.
Those false answers allowed her to live an idyllic life in America for
20 years. Her lies ultimately caught up with her, and the prosecutors, to
their credit, initiated an investigation and prosecution that resulted in
her conviction on one count of naturalization fraud last
November.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism exposed Odeh's terrorist history
and spin strategy in a five-part video series, "Spinning
a Terrorist Into a Victim."
U.S. District Judge Gershwin A. Drain said Thursday that Odeh's case was
about "lying under oath" but had been "politicized" to
make the Palestinian-Israeli conflict the "rallying point to engender
sympathy."
Regular naturalization fraud guidelines, in this case, recommend that
Odeh serve 15-21 months in prison, but prosecutors urged
Judge Drain to go far beyond those guidelines due to the nature of the
crime she hid from authorities. A sentence of five to seven years fits the
crime, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Tukel argued, saying the original
guideline range would fail to deter other terrorists who might consider
seeking entry into the United States by failing to disclose their terrorist
backgrounds.
Judge Drain cited the prosecution's deterrence argument saying he wanted
to "impose a sentence that will make people think twice before lying under
oath to enter the country." He chided Odeh saying, "you don't
have respect for the law." He added that "people are watching
this case" and he wanted to set a precedent that "promotes
respect for the law."
Judge Drain also said that Odeh not only committed perjury in how she
filled out the application, claiming she thought it only applied to her
time in the U.S., he also pointed out that she testified about her alleged
"torture" and Israeli conviction despite repeated instructions by
the court not to do so. For these actions, he not only revoked her
citizenship, he sentenced her to 18 months in prison – still far below a
prison term of five to seven years that the prosecution requested.
Odeh apologized for knowingly disobeying the judge's instructions during
her trial, explaining that the words just "came
out on their own". Yet she continued to speak at length at her
sentencing about her "difficult and harsh" childhood growing up
under "Israeli occupation."
She justified her membership in the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, (PFLP), a known terrorist group, as understandable: "As a
woman in an occupied territory, everyone struggled against occupation and I
was one of them," she said, adding that it was not her fault if people
made her into an "icon."
"Every time I do something, something happens and takes me to the
zero point," Odeh said, citing her birth in Palestine and refugee
experience in Jordan, while denying responsibility for the murders she
participated in.
Footage from a 2004 film, "Women
in Struggle" and from a 1993 video, entitled, "Tell
Your Tale Little Bird" revealed incriminating evidence of Odeh's
role in the Supersol supermarket bombing in 1969. Footage from a 1970
hijacking showed a female PFLP terrorist identifying her group as
"Task Force Rasmieh Odeh."
Defense attorneys did not want Odeh to have to serve any prison time.
They emphasized her community activism in Chicago and persisted in
attacking the credibility of Odeh's conviction in Israel.
In their sentencing memorandum, Odeh's attorneys wrote that the government's
recommendation was a "draconian sentence, for illegitimate political
purposes" designed to "curry favor with their American Zionist
constituents and obfuscate 67 years of Israeli terrorism."
Odeh's principal attorney, Michael Deutsch who has defended Islamic
terrorists for years, emphasized Odeh's "extraordinary"
work within the Arab American and larger community in Chicago.
Unfortunately, he said, the sentencing guidelines "do not talk about a
person's contributions to society. But here was a woman who came to the
country, she had not taken but given of herself to make this a better place
for the immigrants who come here." He cited her age and "physical
and psychological conditions" as reasons justifying a more lenient
sentence. Odeh has been "punished enough" and "to use the
fact that 45 years ago that she may have been involved in resistance
activity seems to me to be unfair and unnecessary," he said.
"Deutsch's description of [Odeh's] participation in the killing of
two civilians as 'resistance activity' is nauseating, revolting, appalling
and reflects the same justification invoked by terrorists around the world
when they kill innocent civilians", said Steven Emerson, Executive
Director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Odeh is the associate director of the Arab American Action Network in
Chicago. Her prosecution sparked a campaign by colleagues and supporters
aimed at pressuring the U.S. Attorney to drop the case. Dozens of people
traveled from Chicago, where Odeh now lives, to Detroit, to pack the
courtroom during the trial and demonstrate in front of the Theodore Levin
U.S. Courthouse.
Among the groups who protested Odeh's prosecution and organized
demonstrations claiming she was innocent are the Arab-American
Anti-Discrimination Committee, American
Muslims for Palestine, the Council
on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and a group of 124
feminist academics.
Despite his recognition of Odeh's repeated flouting of U.S. law, Judge
Drain also nodded to the influence of her campaign of supporters.
To the dismay of anti-terrorism experts who have been following the
trial, Judge Drain applauded Odeh's social activism within the Arab
American and larger community, stating that Odeh was once a
"terrorist", but "that was a situation decades ago." He
said that today she was a "reformed" person: "No doubt in my
mind she [Odeh] has changed and reformed." She is engaged in
"positive and constructive activities right now."
Even still, Judge Drain pointed out that Odeh's background did not
excuse her involvement in terrorist acts and subsequent lies. "You
grew up in a war environment. It's not a whole lot different from a lot of
people I see in some ways," he said.
Odeh was automatically stripped
of her citizenship and faces deportation
after completing her prison sentence. She will remain free on bond
while she appeals her conviction and sentence—which she promises she will
do, saying, "I want to say about today and the future, I hope to find
justice with you."
If her conviction is ultimately upheld, she will be summarily deported
to Jordan—her former country of citizenship—when she completes her
incarceration.
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