FBI Charges Eight Pro-Palestinian Protesters in Michigan Over Threats Against University Leaders and Jewish Federation

The FBI on Wednesday arrested eight pro-Palestinian protesters affiliated with the University of Michigan and accused them of threatening university leaders and their families as part of a pressure campaign to force the university to divest from Israel. The indictments were filed on May 20 and were made public yesterday after arrests in multiple states. According to the indictment documents, the defendants “used encrypted messages, social media platforms and overseas collaboration platforms to research, target and attack their victims.” The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit was one target of the protesters.

The indictment says the eight defendants gathered information on several targets, described to each other how they would “kill,” “torture” and “terrorize” their targets, and carried out parts of their plans. In one message, Ahmet Korkaya, then a medical student, wrote to another defendant about a woman on the university’s board of trustees that he would “poison her slowly.” Another replied that the group should “go into this house and then burn it down.”

“In America, we rule by law, not by fear. The alleged threats and attempts to intimidate public officials, businesses and the Jewish Federation are anti-American,” U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. of the FBI’s Detroit office said in a statement.

The eight people charged include three men and five women, all between the ages of 21 and 28. They were arrested in several locations in Michigan, as well as in Chicago and Milwaukee. The indictment alleges that the defendants were responsible for vandalizing the Jewish Federation building on October 7, 2024, the first anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel.

An indictment was filed against Zainab Eliasagr Hakeem (Canton, Michigan), 23, Amatullah Eliasagr Hakeem (Ann Arbor, Michigan), 21, Paige Elizabeth Fayyak (Ann Arbor, Michigan), 26, Ahmet Karem Korkaya (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), 28, Jonathan Hungro Zou (Ann Arbor, Michigan), 22, Alexander Matthew Sepulveda (Chicago, Illinois), 23, Miriam Muhammad Odeh (Dearborn, Michigan), 24, and Colin Hunter Woger (Ann Arbor, Michigan), 24.

“No one has the right to threaten, intimidate and coerce public officials, police, community institutions or their families. In the dead of night, masked and hooded defendants threw toxic chemicals through the windows of family homes and affixed demand letters to their front doors. At every step they tried to cover their tracks and erase evidence of their crimes. Those involved in coordinated campaigns of threats and intimidation should expect to be held fully accountable under federal law,” said Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge at the FBI’s Detroit office.

After Hamas’ terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, the defendants carried out a series of coordinated actions that threatened University of Michigan leaders, law enforcement authorities and businesses. Because of the university’s financial support and that of other victims in Israel, the defendants acted violently to force the victims to withdraw investments “by any means necessary.”

According to the indictment, on October 20, 2023, the defendants publicly posted a list of demands on social media against the University of Michigan administration. Among the demands, they called on the university to make a “full and complete disengagement” from Israel and from any business that supports Israel.

Dissatisfied with the university’s response, the defendants prepared to act against the leadership through what they called “autonomous actions,” which included forcibly entering and taking over University of Michigan buildings, vandalizing structures, and blocking and disrupting campus events. They also posted threats online.

As part of the conspiracy, the defendants allegedly traveled at night to targeted homes and businesses. They damaged and defaced homes and businesses with messages, threats and spray-painted symbols, including inverted triangles, which Hamas used in its videos to mark targets for death; red handprints, which Hamas used to symbolize the lynching in Ramallah in 2000 and the killing of two Israeli reservists during the Second Intifada; and phrases such as “Intifada” and “avoid investment now.”

The defendants also left demand notes containing further threats, sealed doors, locked bike entrances, broke windows and threw glass jars filled with acid and paint into homes. The defendants filmed the destruction and posted the images online with “official statements” and additional warnings and threats, such as “you can’t hide” and “we’ll only come back stronger.”