DETROIT, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- A woman from the West Bank was charged Tuesday with failing to report her conviction for a terrorist bombing when she became a U.S. citizen.
Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, 66, was arrested in the Chicago area, U.S. Attorney for Detroit Barbara McQuade said. If she is convicted, she will lose her U.S. citizenship and faces up to 10 years in prison.
Odeh was convicted of participating in the 1969 bombings at the British consulate in Jerusalem and an Israeli supermarket, carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, federal investigators say. Two people were killed in the supermarket bombing.
While she was given a life sentence, she was released after 10 years in a prisoner exchange. According to an indictment unsealed in Detroit, she did not reveal her conviction when she entered the United States in 1995 and became a citizen nine years later.
"The United States will never be a safe haven for individuals seeking to distance themselves from their pasts," said William Hayes, acting special agent in charge for Homeland Security in Detroit. "When individuals lie on immigration documents, the system is severely undermined and the security of our nation is put at risk."
