Odeh was featured in a documentary produced in 2004 by Palestinian director Buthina Canaan Khoury, "Women in Struggle." It highlighted four ex-prisoners who had become involved in fighting for Palestinian independence. (The film can be watched here.)
In the film, she describes being interrogated by Israeli soldiers, who brought her father into a room, and tried to force him to sleep with her. "That was one of the worst moments," she says.
The soldiers also brought her into a room where they were torturing a young man with electric shocks. She was naked and forced to watch as they killed him with the shocks.
She also recounts being stripped naked and displayed in front of young men to force them to speak. The soldiers would tie her up, her legs and her arms. She was beaten severely to the point where her hands were going numb and appeared paralyzed.
Odeh states, "This increased my hatred of those who were responsible."
*
A fishing expedition has been ongoing and the Justice Department has thus far been unable to come up with anything to pin on the activists, but that does not mean the investigation will be over any time soon.
Jonas was involved in convicting five individuals for their work with the Holy Land Foundation, a foundation that was the largest Islamic charity in the US before it was shut down because the US government claimed money for Palestinians was going to Hamas.
Iosbaker attended a lecture by Jonas at Depaul's College of Law in Chicago in February. He asked Jonas about the "statutory of limitations for the investigation." Jonas said the Justice Department had eight years for a terrorism investigation.
The suspicion activists share is understandable. Back in May 2012, something similar happened when the government went after longtime Chicano activist Carlos Montes, who has been active in the antiwar, education and civil rights movements, with bogus charges against him for purchasing a gun. The allegations involved an event that had happened 43 years ago when he was a student convicted of a misdemeanor for assaulting a police officer during a demonstration.
Montes worked with the 23 activists when they organized a protest at the Republican National Convention in 2008.
The charges the government tried to bring were eventually dropped at trial. Iosbaker believes it was all a part of the government's targeting of him and the 22 other activists.
Additionally, Iosbaker suggested, "It seems to us that they have been unable to bring indictments. When we were raided, we gathered an enormous amount of political support."
"It's also our opinion that the attack on us was a stretch for the Department of Justice. It was the first time they had gone after political activists and tried to pin us with the crime of providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations" and "criminalize antiwar and international solidarity activism," he added.
The government has been unable to move forward with indicting them so, in the meantime, it appears what the government is doing is "looking for anyone in our circles that they can call a criminal, that they can indict for something criminal."
It has the potential to be effective, even if the activists are not charged with crimes. It can sow fear in the community and make those who are in the broader community shy away from involvement in political organizing.
In May 2011, Abudayyeh went to get money from an ATM and learned that his bank account had been frozen. He later found out his wife's account had been frozen too. The US Treasury Department was apparently involved and once the accounts were unfrozen, his bank, TCF, shut down the family's accounts and had him take his money to another bank. The government has presumably been investigating all who are associated with him, including Odeh.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
