Prosecutors
Try to Refocus Rasmieh Odeh Case
by IPT News • Dec 13, 2016 at
6:20 pm
|
|
|
|
|
Share:  
|
  Be the
first of your friends to like this.
Attorneys for Palestinian bomber Rasmieh Odeh want to delay her re-trial on naturalization fraud for
two months, pointing to a superseding indictment in the case.
The new charging document, which has not yet been filed publicly, still
includes just the one count of naturalization fraud against Odeh, who has
become a heroic figure among Palestinian advocates. But it
includes "additional facts to support the charges," a press release Tuesday from the U.S. Attorney's Office
in Detroit said.
The original indictment emphasized Odeh's "no" answers to
immigration officials when asked several times whether she ever had been
arrested, convicted or imprisoned. During her 2014 trial, Odeh claimed she thought the question only applied to her
time in the United States. In fact, she was arrested and spent 10 years in
an Israeli prison for her role in two 1969 bombings, one of which killed two college students.
"The new indictment ... also alleges that Odeh, in seeking
naturalization, also falsely answered two additional questions on her
application form relating to her association with the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, a designated terrorist organization," the
government news release said.
By emphasizing Odeh's membership in a terrorist organization, the
prosecution appears to be trying to narrow the focus of the case just a
week after a federal judge's ruling broadly expanded it.
U.S. District Judge Gershwin A. Drain granted Odeh a new trial, this
time allowing testimony claiming Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, triggered
by alleged Israeli torture, caused her to "filter" out her
terrorist past when answering the immigration questions.
Drain kept that testimony out of Odeh's 2014 trial, which ended with her conviction and an 18-month prison
sentence. But the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case back to Drain's court, saying he
ruled in error.
Prosecutors telegraphed the move in a previous motion arguing against
the PTSD testimony. Allowing it, they wrote, would mean they would have to
prove Odeh's membership in a terrorist organization. They pointed to several published documents which help do
that, including interviews in which Odeh and an accomplice discussed their
roles in the bombings. In addition, the terrorists who attacked Israeli
athletes during the 1972 Olympic Games "demanded the release of
hundreds of prisoners in Israel in exchange for the athletes, included a
demand to release Defendant Odeh. The PFLP would not demand the release of
anyone not affiliated with the organization," prosecutors wrote.
Similarly, a series of 1970 PFLP airline hijackings were claimed by the
PFLP's 'Task Force Rasmieh Odeh.'
"The PFLP would not name a crew of hijackers after someone not
affiliated with the organization," they wrote.
Even if jurors believed Odeh's claim that she confessed to the Israeli
bombings only after enduring weeks of torture, and that experience led to
her post-traumatic stress, evidence that she was a member of a terrorist
organization – the PFLP – would be enough to disqualify Odeh from entering
the United States or becoming a citizen.
"So, this is a very important move [by] the prosecution, and makes
the PTSD defense much less critical to the case," wrote Cornell University Law Professor William A.
Jacobson.
Odeh's attorneys asked that the case be delayed until mid-March. Judge
Drain has not ruled on that request.
|
Print
Send
Comment
RSS
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment