AP Exclusive: Chicago activist named in probe insists Palestinian trips had no terror link – latimes.com
CHICAGO (AP) — Four months after the FBI raided homes of anti-war activists in the Midwest, a Palestinian-American named in the probe is calling it a “witch hunt” and insisting in a series of interviews with The Associated Press that he has never given money to terrorist groups.
Hatem Abudayyeh, head of an activist network in Chicago that deals in immigration and discrimination issues, says the trips he helped coordinate to the Palestinian territories were fact-finding and educational visits hosted by a women’s organization and that he knew of no links to groups that could be considered involved in terrorism.
The federal government has divulged almost nothing about the focus of the probe, which included subpoenas demanding Abudayyeh and 22 other activists from Chicago, Minneapolis and Grand Rapids, Mich., appear before a grand jury. A line in one Minneapolis subpoena says agents were looking for evidence of money paid “directly or indirectly” to Abudayyeh.