One of Abdul El-Sayed’s former campaign staffers was among the group of anti-Israel activists who were indicted for terrorizing members of Michigan’s Jewish community and University of Michigan officials.
Mariam Odeh, 24, was indicted in June for vandalizing the homes of University of Michigan administrators in an attempt to coerce them into cutting ties with Israel, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan. Odeh and the seven other activists she was indicted alongside have all pleaded not guilty.
Odeh, from Dearborn, Mich., was paid almost $750 as an hourly employee for the El-Sayed campaign, the Detroit News first reported, citing internal campaign documents.
“Upon discovering an error in reviewing our HR files, we’d like to correct information on her [Odeh’s] employment for transparency. She was hired in February as an hourly employee and left the campaign on April 15. The campaign issued one missed hourly back payment in May that will appear on our next FEC filing,” El-Sayed’s spokeswoman Roxie Richner told the Detroit News back in June.
Odeh allegedly participated in vandalism and protests that included putting fake corpses on the lawns of faculty members, as well as spray painting anti-Israeli sentiments on the driveway of the president of the university at the time, according to prosecutors.
Federal officials announced Friday the addition of four more alleged co-conspirators to the indictment.
“No one has the right to threaten, intimidate, and coerce public officials, law enforcement officers, community institutions, or their families. In the dead of night, masked and hooded defendants allegedly threw noxious chemicals through the windows of families’ homes and taped demand letters to their front doors. At every step they attempted to cover their tracks and delete evidence of their crimes,” Jennifer Runyan, special agent in charge of the FBI Detroit Field Office, said in a statement at the time of the indictment.
Anti-Israeli protests that have at times verged into outright antisemitism have rocked the University of Michigan’s campus over the past few years. University officials have been the target of vandalism and threats to their homes amid protesters’ calls for the school to halt its endowment investments into companies associated with Israel, in light of the conflict with Israel and terrorists in Gaza.
“These alleged attempts to terrorize our Jewish community and government officials are nothing new,” United States Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon, Jr. said in a statement in regard to Friday’s additions to the indictment. “From Pharaoh to Hitler to Hamas, those who terrorize Jews have been the bad guys. As Americans, our job is to fight the bad guys.”
If elected, El-Sayed would become the most vocally anti-Israel senator in U.S. history. He has repeatedly accused the Jewish state of genocide and has refused to affirm that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish nation.
Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the Democratic primary, rescinded her endorsement of El-Sayed over the weekend and announced that she would support Republican Mike Rogers.
Leading up to Tuesday’s election, El-Sayed is leading Rogers 53 to 42 percent, according to a recent New York Times/Sienna poll.