Rasmea Odeh

Rasmea Yousef Odeh (in Arabic رسمية يوسف عودة; born 1948), also known as Rasmea Yousef, Rasmieh Steve, and Rasmieh Joseph Steve, is a Palestinian Jordanian and former American citizen who was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) convicted by Israeli military courts for involvement in a 1969 Jerusalem supermarket bombing which killed two young civilians. She was sentenced to life in prison and spent 10 years there before being released in a 1980 prisoner exchange with the PFLP. After her release to Jordan, she immigrated in 1990 to the United States, became a U.S. citizen, and served as associate director at the Arab American Action Network in Chicago, Illinois.

In 2014, Odeh was convicted of immigration fraud by a jury in federal court in Detroit for concealing her Israeli arrest and conviction. Odeh's counsel maintained she did not receive a "full and fair trial" because the judge ruled as irrelevant her testimony that her 1969 confession in Israel had been extracted by torture. In 2015, a federal judge denied Odeh's request to either overturn the conviction or grant a new trial, ruling that her argument lacked legal merit, based on evidence of her fraudulent citizenship application and the fact that the jurors "clearly did not believe [her] explanation", while "the evidence was more than sufficient to support the jury's verdict." Her conviction was vacated by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals and sent back to the District Court in February 2016. In April 2017 she pleaded guilty to failing to disclose her previous conviction on her citizenship application. As part of the plea agreement she was deported without serving jail time.

Early life Odeh has said that she was born in Lifta in 1948, but that her family left for Ramallah when she was a month old. Her father Yousef emigrated to the United States in the 1950s, leaving his wife, son, and 5 daughters in Ramallah. She began attending communist meetings at the age of 12, joining the Arab Nationalist Movement at 13. Her father returned in 1967 after breaking his leg in a work accident. She "became convinced that military action was more important than social or political work" after the Six-Day War, throwing stones at Israelis and training to fire guns. and then for Amman, where Wadie Haddad gave her a letter of introduction to Bashir al-Khairi. She returned to Ramallah on December 31 and went to al-Khairi's office to receive explosives. Odeh and Rashida Abdel-Hamid Ebeido scouted the supermarket location on February 11, purchasing some items (the receipts of which were found in her home), and Haddad met with Rasmea and Aisha Odeh (no relation) on February 20 to help assemble the bombs.

According to Odeh,I . . . was arrested on February 28 and accused of involvement in the supermarket explosion in West Jerusalem and another in the British consulate. We had placed a bomb there to protest Britain's decision to furnish arms to Israel. Actually we placed two bombs, the first was found before it went off so we placed another. The intention was not to hurt people but to remind the world that Palestinians existed, to reassert ourselves and to show that we couldn't accept the occupation and Western connivance in silence. and on February 25 another damaged the British Consulate. The PFLP took credit for both bombings and Israeli police found extensive bomb-making materials, grenades, explosive bricks, receipts from the supermarket, and a manifesto in Odeh's room. Guy Wintelir, a Red Cross observer who attended her entire trial, said that "the bench ha given the accused every chance of defending themselves and the trial was a fair trial".

Odeh claimed in 1975 that her trial and imprisonment were a case of political detention, and that she had suffered torture and rape. These claims were published by a Sunday Times special investigation team in 1979. However, American prosecutors concluded that these claims were "certainly false" and that "the claimed torture did not happen". In 1969, the US Consul General in Jerusalem, Stephen James Campbell, visited her father in prison to check on his condition, and reported to Washington that Yousef Odeh had "complain[ed] of uncomfortable, overcrowded jail conditions", but was otherwise receiving "no worse than standard treatment". She also did not deny her involvement in Women in Struggle (2004), instead reminiscing with Aisha Odeh about their respective roles, and these statements correspond precisely to her 1969 confession. At the time, according to her later federal indictment, she stated she had no criminal record. The U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Michigan said: "An individual convicted of a terrorist bombing would not be admitted to the United States if that information was known at the time of arrival." Odeh would later testify that Williams had not done so in her case.

She appeared in the 2004 documentary Women in Struggle by Buthina Canaan Khoury, about four Palestinian women imprisoned in Israeli jails, which her opponents say provide evidence of her involvement in the bombings, as her co-conspirator Aisha Odeh freely implicated Rasmea Odeh in the bombing. She became associate director of the Arab American Action Network in Chicago. Odeh's lawyers had earlier requested that he step down because he had received an award from the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit for supporting Israel, that his family had fundraised for a pro-Israeli charity, and that he had made many trips to Israel. He said that Odeh's lawyers were engaged in "careless and rank speculation" for suggesting that he could not be impartial in the case, stating that "a judge’s prior activities relating to his religious convictions are not a valid basis for questioning his impartiality in a particular case". He noted that some of the material brought forward applied to his cousin rather than himself.

Odeh was tried in November 2014 for immigration fraud before a federal jury in Detroit, Michigan, with Judge Gershwin A. Drain presiding.

Before trial, her defense argued that Odeh had been tortured while in prison, and suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder. Judge Drain ruled that evidence on these matters were irrelevant to whether Odeh lied on her immigration documents, and disallowed testimony on these topics.

Odeh was convicted of immigration fraud in federal court in Detroit on November 10, 2014, for concealing her prior arrest, conviction, and imprisonment. Judge Drain told the jury: "I think your verdict is a fair and reasonable one based on the evidence that came in." On December 8, Judge Drain agreed to allow her to be released on a $50,000 cash bond, pending sentencing, which was effected on December 11, 2014. The judge held that evidence showed that Odeh illegally obtained U.S. citizenship, the jurors "clearly did not believe [her] explanation", and "the evidence was more than sufficient to support the jury’s verdict." She was allowed to go free on bail during her appeal. On December 6, 2016, Judge Drain in Detroit denied prosecutors’ request to reinstate Odeh's conviction, instead granting Odeh a new trial, scheduled to begin January 10, 2017.

On March 23, 2017, Rasmea Odeh accepted a plea agreement where she would serve no prison time but would lose her U.S. citizenship and be deported.

On August 17, 2017, Odeh was formally stripped of her US citizenship in a federal court hearing in Detroit before Judge Gershwin Drain. She was subsequently ordered to be deported to Jordan and to pay a $1,000 fine for immigration fraud.

On September 20, 2017, Odeh was deported to Jordan.

After deportation to Jordan On March 19, 2019, she was banned from speaking at a public meeting marking International Women's Day in Berlin after German officials revoked her Schengen visa. Berlin city officials forced the Dersim Cultural Community Center to cancel the talk (for the Dersim community see Dersim rebellion and Kurdish Alevism). According to Haaretz, Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) issued a statement saying the decision was made thanks to pressure applied by him and "a slew of Jewish organizations in Germany, as well as protest by the Israeli ambassador in Germany."