A former campaign worker for Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is among 12 people charged in a federal case involving threats against University of Michigan officials and the Jewish Federation of Detroit. Mariam Muhammed Odeh, 24, of Dearborn, faces a charge of conspiracy to transmit threats in interstate and foreign commerce. She pleaded not guilty after prosecutors unsealed the original indictment in June. A new indictment made public October 30th added four defendants to the case.
The dispute began over the university’s investments after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, 2023. Pro-Palestinian activists wanted the university to pull its money from companies with ties to Israel. Federal prosecutors allege that members of the group searched for officials’ home addresses, went to their houses at night and posted photographs of the damage online with warnings about what would happen if the university refused their demands.
Odeh’s work for El-Sayed came well after the alleged vandalism in 2024. His Senate campaign hired her as an hourly employee in February 2026, and she left on April 15th. Less than two months later, she appeared in federal court in Detroit before U.S. Magistrate Judge Anthony Patti as one of the eight defendants named in the original case.
Campaign finance disclosures listed two March salary payments to Odeh, The Detroit News reported. The campaign paid her $154 on March 3rd and $593 on March 13th. Campaign spokeswoman Roxie Richner said the campaign issued a payment in May for hourly wages it had missed. At Odeh’s initial appearance, pretrial services officer Brian Harmon told the judge that she had reported working “for a local Senate candidate.”
The Associated Press reported that all eight original defendants pleaded not guilty. Among the incidents investigators cited were fake bloodied corpses left in a university regent’s yard and anti-Israel messages spray-painted at the home of Santa Ono, then the university’s president. On campus, a protest encampment stood for a month in 2024 before police cleared it.
Federal prosecutors described a separate incident at the provost’s home. They accused Alexander Matthew Sepulveda and Jonathan Hongru Zou of throwing two glass jars containing a blue substance and food compost through a window. The pair allegedly painted inverted red triangles on the house along with the words “Divest” and “Free Palestine.” When investigators went to execute a search warrant at Sepulveda’s home in April 2025, prosecutors said, someone warned the group through encrypted chats and Sepulveda erased the contents of his phone and laptop.
Watch CBS Detroit’s report on the original indictment here:
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Two other defendants, Zainab Aliasgar Hakim and Paige Elizabeth Feyock, face a witness-intimidation charge involving a Michigan student they suspected of talking to federal authorities. Prosecutors said the women discussed searching him for a wire before confronting him on August 6th, 2024. Hakim warned that the student was “going to send us to federal prison.” The conspiracy charge against Odeh carries up to five years in prison if she is convicted.
In its October 30th announcement, the U.S. attorney’s office identified a university police lieutenant, two regents and two businesses among the alleged targets. Investigators said people who took part photographed the attacks and circulated the pictures to intimidate others who supported Israel. Authorities arrested two of the newly charged defendants, Henry David MacKeen-Shapiro and Aaron Hunter Vonbargen, that week. The other two, Joseph Mark Fisher and Srishti Tarana Sharma, were still at large when prosecutors announced the charges.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.