Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's birth mother worked for a charity later tied to Osama bin Laden.
Fatten Fathy Elkomy was employed by the Islamic American Relief Agency, known as IARA-USA, from 1999 through at least 2004, according to documents reviewed by The Midwesterner. The bombshell connection was reported as El-Sayed runs against Republican Mike Rogers for Michigan's open Senate seat. El-Sayed, a progressive who snagged Bernie Sanders' endorsement but keeps dodging the socialist tag, clinched the Democratic nomination after pushing Medicare for All and other massive government expansion proposals.
Now here's where it gets wild. IARA-USA marketed itself as a do-gooder outfit helping orphans and providing healthcare in conflict zones. It operated as the American branch of a global network headquartered in Khartoum, Sudan, with over 40 offices worldwide. Sounds noble, right?
Except the U.S. Treasury Department had a very different take. On October 13, 2004, Treasury slapped IARA's entire worldwide operation with a terrorism designation under Executive Order 13224, freezing its American assets and cutting off all support. The reason? Treasury said IARA had been affiliated with Maktab Al-Khidamat, an organization co-founded and bankrolled by bin Laden that officials called a forerunner to al-Qaeda. The department stated that international IARA offices gave direct financial backing to bin Laden himself. Even more damning, Treasury alleged that IARA, bin Laden, and Maktab Al-Khidamat pooled their funds together. Overseas IARA branches allegedly funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to bin Laden in 1999. The charity also reportedly served as a pipeline for money connected to Hamas-linked terrorist operations in a Western European country during the early 2000s.
To be crystal clear, no evidence has surfaced showing Elkomy personally had any involvement in terrorist financing or criminal conduct. She described her own role as assisting children who had lost at least one parent. However, her name did appear on the government's proposed exhibit list in a later federal prosecution of IARA. One entry referenced a December 2000 transfer request from Elkomy involving $24,607.34 destined for the group's Iraq office, along with a child sponsorship ledger. Her presence in those documents reflected her employment, not any criminal accusation.
IARA-USA eventually pleaded guilty in 2016 to some serious federal charges, including conspiracy to violate sanctions law, money laundering conspiracy, and obstructing tax administration. The Justice Department revealed the organization secretly moved $1.375 million to Iraq in violation of American sanctions, hid those transfers from the IRS, and agreed to shut down permanently.
Elkomy pushed back on the terrorist designation when the government pulled the plug in 2004. She told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the shutdown would abandon children who relied on the charity's programs. She said it broke her heart that those kids would lose their support.
The timing of this revelation could not be more politically explosive. El-Sayed is trying to flip a Senate seat, and now voters are learning his mother's former employer was in bed with the most notorious terrorist network on the planet. Michigan politics just got a whole lot messier.
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