A Palestinian living in Chicago was sentenced to 18 months in prison for lying on her immigration form when she applied to be a US citizen, the AP reported Thursday.
Rasmieh Odeh, with dozens of supporters, appeared in Detroit's federal court for denying any previous convictions on her citizenship application, when in fact she had been arrested for "terrorism" charges against Israel decades ago. She will remain free while she appeals the case.
Odeh, who helps run Chicago's Arab American Action Network, said she believed the question was specific to US convictions. Judge Gershwin Drain said the 67-year-old woman had "changed her ways" since she had been convicted of two bombings in Jerusalem, but that she needed to receive a light sentence for lying.
“This case is not about the Israel-Palestinian conflict or about freedom fighters," Drain said, according to The Chicago Sun-Times.
Prosecutors had asked for five to seven years imprisonment, well above the 12-18 month charge on the federal guideline.
“A light sentence in this case would be a signal to anyone who has fought overseas for ISIS or a similar organization that there is not much risk in coming to the United States, hiding one’s past and seeking citizenship,” prosecutors Jonathan Tukel and Mark Jebson wrote, according to AP.
Odeh said Israeli authorities had tortured her into confessing to the bombings in 1969, when she was sentenced to life in prison. Two students were killed in one of the explosions.
“Now, with the bodies of hundreds of innocents slaughtered in Gaza in August fresh in the minds of all who bother to care about humanity, the prosecution here demands a wholly unjustified, draconian sentence, for illegitimate political purposes, against this woman who has suffered so much and given so much,” her defense lawyers James Fennerty and Michael Deutsch wrote, accusing the government of a politically motivated sentencing.
Prosecutors said Odeh showed no remorse for her actions in Israel, pointing to a documentary in which she has a reunion with several Palestinian radicals, one of whom was also charged in a series of 1969 airplane hijackings, The Chicago Tribune said. In a 2004 documentary Odeh describes her experience with Israeli police and said she had been stripped naked, beaten and humiliated.
"This increased my hatred against those who were responsible," Odeh said in the film.
Odeh will likely be deported to Jordan.
