The biological mother of Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed spent five years working for an international relief organization that was later designated by the U.S. government over allegations that it helped finance Hamas, supported Taliban-linked activities and had connections to Osama bin Laden’s network, according to records highlighted this week, the Jerusalem Post report.
The connection involving El-Sayed’s mother, Fatten Fathy Elkomy, was first reported Tuesday by the Midwesterner and was independently verified by The Jerusalem Post.
El-Sayed was raised primarily by his Egyptian father, Mohamed El-Sayed, and his father’s second wife, Jacqueline. His biological mother has rarely figured prominently in his political biography. She remarried and moved back to the Middle East while El-Sayed was still young.
The Midwesterner, however, raised questions about whether Elkomy’s absence from her son’s public political story may have been deliberate.
Records show that Elkomy was employed from 1999 until 2004 by the Islamic American/African Relief Agency, known as IARA. Based in Khartoum, Sudan, the organization operated approximately 40 offices around the globe and presented its mission as humanitarian work assisting orphans, providing health care and helping disadvantaged populations in conflict zones.
But the U.S. Treasury Department painted a dramatically different picture of some of IARA’s activities when it announced sanctions against the organization on October 13, 2004. According to Treasury, IARA participated in a joint program with an institute involved in assisting Taliban fighters and transferred money into the Palestinian territories that was intended for terrorist activity. Treasury also said IARA functioned as a financial conduit for Hamas in a Western European country.
The federal government formally designated IARA that same day, along with five individuals associated with the organization.
Additional information subsequently released by the Treasury Department alleged that IARA had connections to Maktab Al-Khidamat, or MK, an organization co-founded and financed by Osama bin Laden that served as a predecessor to al Qaeda.
Treasury also said IARA’s international branches had directly provided financial assistance to bin Laden and that one of bin Laden’s previous lieutenants had served as the head of IARA’s operations in Afghanistan.
The organization’s legal problems escalated in March 2007, when the Justice Department brought a 33-count indictment against IARA-US involving the illegal movement of money to Iraq.
Federal prosecutors assembled an extensive documentary record in USA v. IARA, including 945 exhibits consisting of telephone records, faxes, bank statements, wire transfers, tax documents, emails and other material. In an exhibit list filed in May 2010 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Elkomy’s name appeared 14 times. Those references involved eight wire transfers, five recorded telephone conversations and an IARA request to transfer $24,607.34 to the organization’s office in Iraq.
Elkomy’s brother, Mohamed Elkomy — El-Sayed’s uncle — also appeared dozens of times in the evidence cited in the case.
Neither Fatten Elkomy nor Mohamed Elkomy was charged or named as a co-conspirator. Individuals associated with IARA were not prosecuted on terrorism charges. The organization itself, however, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate financial sanctions by sending money to Iraq. IARA ultimately dissolved in 2016.
Elkomy publicly rejected allegations connecting the relief organization to terrorism when she was interviewed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2004. She said she had “been working there serving orphans and children with at least one deceased parent, and it breaks my heart they’re not going to get any help.”
According to Elkomy’s LinkedIn profile, she has worked as a psychiatric nurse practitioner with Missouri Behavioral Health Services since July 2013.
El-Sayed, whose full name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, was born in Michigan in 1984 to Egyptian immigrant parents. He attended the University of Michigan before studying at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and later attending Columbia University, where he earned his medical degree. He also holds a doctorate in public health.
A victory would make El-Sayed the first Muslim elected to the United States Senate.
