Evergreen Park Woman to be Deported After Prison Stint

A 67-year-old Evergreen Park woman believed to have played a role in blowing up a Jerusalem supermarket in 1969 will spend the next 18 months in a federal prison. Stripped of her U.S. citizenship, when Rasmieh Odeh gets out of prison, she’ll be deported, most likely to Jordan.

The Arab activist who was sentenced by a federal judge last Thursday in Detroit is not bound for prison because of any terrorist activities. Rather, she was found guilty of lying to U.S. immigration authorities about having spent time in an Israeli prison.

“This case is not about the Israel/Palestinian conflict or about freedom fighters…it’s about whether someone was truthful when they tried to get into the country,” said U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain in handing down the punishment.

Her lawyers wanted the government to allow Odeh to leave the country without prison time.

Prosecutors wanted her sentenced to seven years behind bars, and called her a “terrorist icon.”

Odeh had moved to the Chicago suburbs in the 1990s and she worked with Arab immigrants to help them find their way in America. More than a hundred supporters attended her sentencing.

In 1969, she was convicted in Israel of taking part in the Jerusalem supermarket attack, a bombing with took the lives of two students. Odeh claimed the Israelis tortured her into a confession, but later, in a documentary film she admitted to her involvement.

In 2013, federal agents arrested Odeh for lying on her immigration form.