Obama Admin Put El-Sayed’s Sister-in-Law on Terror Watch List

There might be some awkward family politics at play when President Obama stumps with Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed next week.The Obama administration placed Dr. El-Sayed’s sister-in-law, Mariam Jakaku, on a terror watch list according to two federal lawsuits from 2016 that have reemerged after Mr. Obama said he would campaign with Mr. El-Sayed.Dr. El-Sayed married Ms. Jukaku’s sister in May 2006 after meeting as students at the University of Michigan. Years later, Ms. Jakaku discovered she was on a list of known or suspected terrorists.The Terrorist Screening Center was established in 2003 in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. The watch list is the federal government’s master repository for suspected international and domestic terrorist records and it is used to identify possible terrorists. There are now hundreds of thousands of names on the list.In March 2012, Ms. Jukaku, according to a 2016 lawsuit filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, went to Detroit Metropolitan Airport to fly to California. Unable to check in online, she went to the ticket counter to be checked in manually.Ms. Jukaku’s boarding pass was stamped with the “SSSS,” indicating that she had been designated as a “known or suspected terrorist.” The lawsuit claims she was subjected to extensive searches, pat downs, and chemical testing while passing through security.Ms. Jukaku filed a redress request through the Department of Homeland Security. She also filed a civil rights complaint with the Transportation Security Administration. The suit alleged that at no time was Ms. Jukaku given any notice of the factual basis for being placed on the watch list and was not given an opportunity to contest her designation.Ms. Jukaku appeared at a 2016 press conference that announced the lawsuits. She stated that she believed she was no longer on the watch list by that point but alleged that she was placed on the list based solely upon a hunch because of her race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, or First Amendment protected activities.Ms. Jakaku lived in California at the time of the lawsuits. A 2004 article in the University of California Los Angeles campus newspaper, in a preview of Islamic Awareness Week, identified her as the president of the Muslim Student Association. “We hope to dispel different myths about our religion, which concern topics such as terrorism and oppression of women,” Ms. Jakaku told the Daily Bruin.Ms. Jakaku was also the editor of Al Talib, a Muslim news magazine at UCLA. In 2004, she alleged that the government shut down three of the magazine’s advertisers over alleged ties to terrorist networks. She said the UCLA Muslim Student Association was also accused of being a terrorist organization.This past week, Dr. El-Sayed said he nor his family had any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood during a “Meet the Press” interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker. But resurfaced social media posts from his maternal half-sister have raised questions about that claim. “Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s when she was in college,” Eman Abdelhadi said in a 2012 Twitter post.Their mother, Fatten Elkomy, attended Egypt’s Alexandria University in the 1970s. The Muslim Brotherhood dominated political activity at the school at that time, according to a more than decade-old Brookings report.In another 2012 post, Ms. Abdelhadi, a University of Chicago assistant professor, stated “My family has long been MB.”“Praying for all my family that supports the #MB in #Egypt. Lie low, stay safe,” Ms. Abdelhadi said in a 2013 tweet.Mr. Obama is scheduled to attend a campaign rally with Dr. El-Sayed on Oct. 24 at Detroit. Dr. El-Sayed has been critical of Mr. Obama in the past, including accusations that he had drifted too far to the right.When a reporter asked why he would now campaign with Mr. Obama, Dr. El-Sayed answered, “There’s no world in which I get to run for office without somebody like President Obama.”

Obama Admin Put El-Sayed’s Sister-in-Law on Terror Watch List

Obama Admin Put El-Sayed’s Sister-in-Law on Terror Watch List

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