Palestinian-American activist sentenced to prison for immigration fraud

posted on: Mar 13, 2015

A Palestinian-American activist was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Thursday for immigration fraud after failing to tell U.S. authorities that she had been imprisoned in Israel for a 1969 supermarket bombing that killed two people.

Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, 67, will be deported after serving her sentence as a result of last year’s conviction in a Detroit federal court of unlawful procurement of naturalization.

Odeh served 10 years in Israeli prison for the bombing before being released in a prisoner swap with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). She had said Israeli authorities tortured and raped her to get a confession. But U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain barred reference to that at trial. He said what happened in Israel was not relevant to whether she lied on the citizenship form.

Before sentencing, Odeh told Drain, “I’m not a terrorist, I’m not a bad woman.”

But Drain said the offense is about lying under oath.

Source: america.aljazeera.com