Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, a 66-year-old Chicago-area woman, has been charged with immigration fraud for failing to tell U.S authorities that she took part in a deadly terror bombing in Israel over 4 decades ago, federal prosecutors in Detroit said Tuesday, as reported by NBC News.
Yousef Odeh, as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was sentenced to life in prison by Israel for placing multiple bombs at the British Consulate and a supermarket in Jerusalem in 1969. The supermarket bombs "killed two people, while the explosives caused... structural damage," news reports said.
She was released after 10 years as part of a prisoner exchange, where she returned to the West Bank, according to an indictment released by the Chicago Tribune. Odeh immigrated to the U.S. and became a citizen in 2004. Documents reveal that "she failed to disclose her arrest, conviction and imprisonment in Israel. [She] was arrested Tuesday in suburban Chicago," NBC News also reported.
If convicted, Odeh will be stripped of her U.S. citizenship, and could face up to 10 years in prison for naturalization fraud.
"An individual convicted of a terrorist bombing would not be admitted to the United States if that information was known at the time of arrival," said Barbara McQuade, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
"The United States will never be a safe haven for individuals seeking to distance themselves from their pasts," added William Hayes who serves as an acting special agent in charge for homeland security investigations in Detroit. "When individuals lie on immigration documents, the system is severely undermined and the security of our nation is put at risk."
The PFLP, an off-shoot of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, became well-known in the late 1960s and early 1970s for orchestrating armed aircraft hijackings and terrorist attacks. Based in the West Bank, their founder and leader George Habash, died in 2008. The group successfully orchestrated numerous suicide bombing attacks in Israel until 2004.
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