Woman to plea to charges she hid Israeli terrorism conviction
Published May 16, 2014
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A woman convicted in a 1969 terrorist bombing in Israel is set to enter a plea to charges that she concealed her past when immigrating to the United States.
Politico on May 14 reported that the Detroit federal judge presiding over the case of Rasmieh Yousef Odeh set a May 21 plea hearing in her case. It was not clear what her plea would be. According to Politico, her charges carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and deportation.
Odeh, who became a naturalized citizen in 2004, was arrested in October for failing to mention her conviction in her immigration papers.
Israel jailed Odeh for life for her involvement in a number of Jerusalem bombings in 1969, including one at a supermarket that killed two Hebrew University students, Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe.
She was released in a prisoner exchange with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1980, and immigrated to the United States from Jordan in 1995.
The Illinois Department of Insurance last year briefly employed Odeh as a health care navigator, an official who assists people seeking health care options through the Affordable Care Act.
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