In the final days before the election, a TV ad being run by the Michigan Republican Party in support of Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Clifford Taylor, makes use of a dark image of a Middle Eastern male, associating a Dearborn man with terrorism.

Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Cliff Taylor, who is being challanged this election by Judge Diane Hathaway.

Insinuating that Democratic challenger Diane Marie Hathaway is soft on criminals, the ad alludes to a case in which she sentenced Houssein Zorkot to probation. Zorkot was convicted of carrying a weapon in a motor vehicle — a misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of two years — after he brandished an AK47 rifle at Hemlock Park in Dearborn in September, 2007.
Zorkot had already served four months in holding, according to his lawyer William Swor.

“Probation for a terrorist sympathizer? We’re at war with terrorists,” the announcer in the ad said.

Swor said the ad uses Zorkot’s image beside an image of an AK 47 before showing images of militants in fatigues and shifts to two men shooting a rocket launcher. It then cuts away to Hathaway.

Swor said Zorkot never made any threats, but appeared at the park with the weapon. He said he was given probation, placed under restrictions and kicked out of school as a result of the incident.

“When we went to court, witnesses said all he did was hold the gun,” he said. “When all the facts got sorted out, it was handled appropriately… The prosecutor’s office didn’t complain about the sentence.”

He said Zorkot had a website on which he wrote that Hizbullah is not a terrorist organization, but that labeling him a terrorist is slanderous.

“This ad is all over the state. This is a shame. It’s a message of hate… It’s an embarrassment to his family. It’s an embarrassment to the entire community… How many Anglos run around in parks and fields playing with guns?”

Attorney William Swor, who plans to sue the Republican Party on behalf of an Arab man whose image was used in an ad that suggests he has connections to terrorism and that Hathaway gave him a break.

Swor said he intends to sue the Republican Party on behalf of Zorkot for slander, libel, defamation or misrepresentation.
“This poor young man… He made a mistake. He’s trying to put his life back together… It violates every principle of American justice.”

He said that if Taylor knew about the ad, “he should condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”

“It’s racist. It’s bigoted. The fact that it should be associated with the Chief Judge of the Michigan Supreme Court is a shame,” he said.

Colleen Pero, Taylor’s campaign manager, said the campaign itself had nothing to do with the ad and wasn’t even familiar with it.

She said she couldn’t comment on it without having seen it.

When reached by phone Thursday night, Pero said she was at that moment in the company of seven Arab women from Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, who had just come to the U.S. to take part in a program of the Michigan Council of Citizen Diplomacy, which Pero co-chairs, in which the visitors observe and learn about U.S. elections.

A phone message seeking comment was left with the Republican Party.