The Bowdoin Faculty chapter of radical group College students for Justice in Palestine, co-founded by socialist NYC mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, went to bat for a terrorist convicted of lethal bombings in Israel — and was then later booted out of the US for immigration fraud.
Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, 70, was convicted for a pair of bombings in Israel she helped execute in 1969 — one at a Supersol grocery store that killed two school college students and a second on the British Consulate within the nation.
Odeh helped perform the heinous crimes below the flag of the Well-liked Entrance for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a US-designated terror group.
The Palestinian-Jordanian radical was sentenced to life in jail in Israel after she was convicted in 1970, however was launched in 1979 as a part of a prisoner change.
Odeh then arrived within the US from Jordan on an immigrant visa in 1994 and have become a citizen in 2004.
The terrorist was ordered deported in 2017 for mendacity about her involvement within the bombings on each her visa and US citizenship utility.
Nonetheless, in 2014, the yr Mamdani graduated from Bowdoin Faculty, SJP shared an article about her case from The Hill on Fb, and crowed, “Justice for Rasmea Odeh!”
A Fb account linked to Mamdani additionally “liked” the assertion, which was seen by The Submit.
The upstart socialist helped launch the Bowdoin chapter of SJP throughout his time on the elite school.
The identical group in 2013 additionally invited radical Lebanese-American speaker, As’advert AbuKhalil, to deal with the coed physique.
AbuKhalil has sensationally known as Israel a much bigger terror risk than Iran and boasted he was vastly influenced by a Palestinian chief with the nickname the “godfather of Middle Eastern terrorism.”
Unbiased New York Metropolis mayoral candidate Jim Walden hit out at Mamdani on X for SJP’s social media put up in help of Odeh, saying it “praised her as a victim” and calling it “radical extremism and antisemitism.”
Remi Kanazi, an writer and poet affiliated with SJP, additionally tweeted his help of Odeh in a 2014 put up on X, writing, “Why is the Obama administration prosecuting torture victim Rasmea Odeh? Drop the charges: Write or call in TODAY,” he wrote with a hyperlink to an endtheoccupation.org article that has since been taken offline.
In her 2017 plea settlement, Odeh admitted mendacity about her felony historical past and convictions in her US immigration functions, and that she knew it was towards the regulation to supply false data to the US authorities.
“Had Odeh revealed the truth about her criminal history, as she was required to by law, she never would have been granted an immigrant visa, admitted to the United States, allowed to live here for the last 22 years or granted United States citizenship,” the plea learn.
She was stripped of her citizenship, barred from the nation for all times and deported to Jordan.
Although Mamdani graduated from Bowdoin in spring 2014, the SJP chapter he based has continued to interact in more and more radical activism.
Earlier this yr, the group occupied a campus constructing as a part of a protest towards the varsity’s funding practices and President Trump hinting at taking management of war-torn Gaza, the Bowdoin Orient wrote.
In the meantime, Mamdani himself has raised eyebrows with a number of previous statements and social media posts that seemed to be sympathetic to recognized terrorists.
In a single resurfaced tweet, Mamdani appeared to defend al Qaeda menace Anwar al-Awalaki, who was later taken out in a drone strike accredited by then-President Barack Obama.
In his days as a rapper, Mamdani praised the heads of the so-called “Holy Land Five,” the Holy Land Basis for Aid and Improvement, an notorious nonprofit convicted of funneling greater than $12 million to the fear group Hamas.
Mamdani’s camp didn’t instantly reply to The Submit’s request for remark.
