DETROIT –  Attorneys representing Chicago’s Palestinian American community organizer, Rasmea Odeh, have filed a motion and brief in Detroit’s U.S. District Court to dismiss the indictment against her. The defense attorneys are saying the charges are the product of an illegal investigation targeting Palestine solidarity efforts.

Odeh, 66, was indicted last year for allegedly lying on her citizenship application about a conviction in an Israeli military court decades ago.

Odeh was found guilty of “membership of an illegal organization” in Israel in 1970. She was convicted for being a member of the Popular Front of Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and participating in three bombings claimed by the organization, one of which targeted a marketplace.

Odeh served 10 years in Israeli prisons before being released in a prisoner-exchange deal between Israel and the PFLP.

She immigrated to the United States 20 years ago and has been living in Chicago, where she became a known advocate for immigrant and women’s rights. 

Federal officers arrested her at her Chicago home on Oct. 22.

The motion says the FBI and the Justice Department are attempting to criminalize efforts to empower Chicago’s Arab and Muslim communities and to build solidarity with the struggle in Palestine.

According to the motion, on January 2010, Chicago Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox,  initiated a request to the state of Israel  for records on Odeh as part of his illegal investigation of peaceful political activists.

Later that year, on Sept. 24, 2010, the FBI raided the home of Hatem Abudayyeh, who works with Odeh in the offices of the Arab American Action Network. 

That same day, the FBI raided the homes of six other Midwestern anti-war and Palestine solidarity activists. In the following months, Fox’s name appeared as the contact person on subpoenas delivered to 23 pro-Palestine and anti-war activists, ordering them to appear before a grand jury investigating “material support of terrorism.” 

No one was indicted.

In July 2011, the Israelis sent a set of documents to Fox, purportedly supporting the claim that Odeh had been imprisoned in Israel, according to the motion. Odeh was indicted two years later for allegedly lying in filling out her naturalization paperwork.

“Interestingly, the indictment was obtained by the office of the United States Attorney’s office from the Eastern District of Michigan, through a grand jury sitting in the Eastern District of Michigan,” the motion states. “The United States Attorney in Illinois, which was the office that initiated the request for the Israeli documents and was carrying out the investigation, apparently passed the case to the office in Michigan, to divert attention from its failed efforts to criminalize… [the work of activists in Chicago.]”