US to deport 69-year-old Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh

Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh is set to be deported from the US to Jordan on Tuesday, her spokesperson said.

Supporters and community activists plan to gather at O’Hare Airport’s international terminal before Odeh, nearly 70, departs for Jordan, said Hatem Abudayyeh, coordinator of her defence committee.

Odeh pleaded guilty in April to concealing her convictions when she applied for US citizenship in Detroit in 2004. If known at the time, her record would have disqualified her from entering the US a decade earlier.

In 1970, Odeh was convicted of two bombings in Jerusalem, including one that killed two young men at a supermarket.

However, she insists she was tortured into confessing by the Israeli military. Odeh said they used rape and electric shocks to force her into a confession.

She was sentenced to life in prison but was released in 1979 as part of a prisoner swap with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

With family in Michigan, she applied for a US visa in 1994 but didn’t disclose her record.

She also didn’t disclose it when she applied for citizenship in 2004. Odeh was convicted of lying and sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2014, but the verdict was overturned. She chose to make a deal with the government rather than face a second trial.

The now 69-year-old didn’t serve any time in prison after pleading guilty, but she lost her citizenship and must leave the US.

In Chicago, Odeh was associate director of the Arab American Action Network, which provides social services and education. She is widely respected for her work with immigrants, especially Arab women.