Suspected Serial Killer Serving Life in Prison Sues to be Deported

The brother of a man killed by Elias Abuelazam, 37, thinks Abuelazam wants to return to his native Israel because he thinks he’ll be treated better in prison. (Photo: Arlington, VA, Police Department)

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A suspected serial killer already serving a life sentence in Michigan for murder is asking federal authorities to deport him to Israel so he can stand trial there for an attempted murder charge dating back to 2009.

Elias Abuelazam, 37, of Flint was convicted of first-degree murder two years ago in the 2010 killing of Arnold Minor. Authorities suspected him in two other murders, but dismissed charges after the conviction in Minor’s death sent him to prison for life without the possibility of parole, MLive/The Flint Journal reports.

In all, Abuelazam was a suspect in 14 stabbings in the Flint area, five of them fatal, in a nationally watched crime spree that spanned Ohio and Virginia. The jury in his 2012 trial rejected an insanity defense. He claimed he had been under the spell of “evil forces,” the Associated Press reported in a story on The Huffington Post.

This month, Abuelazam sued both the U.S. Attorney General and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, claiming in a petition filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan that the government has refused his deportation requests.

Aduelazam isn’t represented by counsel in the lawsuit, in which he asks to be deported to Ramla, Israel, his hometown, to be “tried, convicted and sentencing” in the alleged attempted murder of Oct. 1, 2009. He didn’t offer any details about alleged crime, but nevertheless asked the government to “prepare the necessary warrants and extradition documents” to return him to Israel.

Abuelazam almost made it out of the country before his trial. He was taken into custody at an Atlanta airport minutes before he could board a flight to Israel. A call with key information had come in just hours before to a tipline set up by a mutli-agency task force investigating the string of stabbings.

Authorities were able to trace him to an airport in Louisville, KY, where they found blood evidence tying him to one of the stabbings in his suitcase, and later to the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Arnold Minor’s brother, Kareem Minor, thinks the lawsuit is a ploy to return to Israel, where he thinks he may receive better treatment than at the Gus Harrison Correctional Facility in Adrian, where he is serving his sentence.

“He should stay right where he his,” Kareem Minor, told MLive/The Flint Journal.

Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton called the lawsuit “frivolous,” and said he expects it to be dismissed. It has been transferred to U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, but no new court dates have been established.

“Abuelazam was duly convicted by a Genesee County jury and sentenced to life in prison without parole,” Leyton said. “He should remain right where he is – in a Michigan prison.”

The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld Abuelazam’s conviction in June.