Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed's birth mother worked for years at an organization the U.S. Treasury Department designated a "specially designated global terrorist" group, one accused of funneling money to Osama bin Laden, Hamas, and the Taliban.
Fatten Fathy Elkomy, El-Sayed's birth mother, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency from 1999 until at least 2004, the New York Post reported, citing an investigation by The Midwesterner. IARA billed itself as a humanitarian outfit focused on health care, orphans, and people in conflict zones. It operated dozens of offices worldwide. But in 2004, the Treasury Department told a different story, designating the organization a global terrorist entity and alleging it had provided direct financial support to bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks.
El-Sayed, who narrowly won Michigan's Democratic Senate primary with 48.5% of the vote, has consistently referenced his father Mohamed El-Sayed and stepmother Jacqueline El-Sayed on the campaign trail. He has made little to no public mention of Elkomy, per The Midwesterner's reporting. His campaign did not respond to the New York Post's request for comment.
The connection between El-Sayed's mother and a federally designated terrorist organization raises questions voters deserve answers to, not because Elkomy herself was ever accused of wrongdoing, but because El-Sayed's apparent silence about her and her employment history invites scrutiny about what he knew and when.
The Treasury Department's 2004 designation laid out serious allegations. The department stated:
"Information available to the U.S. shows that the overseas branches IARA provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to UBL in 1999."
"UBL" is the government's abbreviation for Osama bin Laden. Treasury also alleged IARA supported Hamas and Taliban fighters. Following the designation, the government blocked all of IARA's property.
Elkomy was still working at IARA when the designation came down. In a 2004 interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, she pushed back on the terrorism allegations:
"I've 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."
That statement framed her work as purely humanitarian. But the federal government's actions over the following decade told a grimmer story about the organization that employed her.
In March 2007, the Department of Justice charged IARA's U.S. arm, referred to in federal filings as IARA-USA, for illegally transferring funds to Iraq. The charges centered on sanctions violations, not terrorism counts directly. No individuals cited in the federal case were charged with terrorism-related crimes.
But the guilty plea that followed, announced by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Missouri in July 2016, was damning. IARA-USA admitted to conspiring to violate sanctions by illegally funneling nearly $1.4 million to Iraq. As part of the plea agreement, the organization agreed to dissolve.
The U.S. Attorney's Office noted the practical reality of the situation in its announcement:
"The plea agreement acknowledges that, due to its designation as a specially designated global terrorist and the subsequent blocking of all its property, IARA has no funds readily available to it to pay any fine."
So the organization that employed El-Sayed's mother admitted in federal court to illegally moving nearly $1.4 million in violation of U.S. sanctions, and was so thoroughly shut down by the government's terrorist designation that it could not even pay a fine.
El-Sayed won the Democratic primary by defeating four-term Congresswoman Haley Stevens by fewer than 15,000 votes, less than one percentage point out of more than 1.5 million ballots counted. He ran on a platform that included Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and cutting U.S. aid to Israel. He accused Israel of genocide in Gaza during the campaign.
El-Sayed overcame more than $60 million in outside spending and opposition from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, outgoing Senator Gary Peters, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to secure the nomination. Senator Bernie Sanders called it "the most extraordinary victory that I can think of in modern American politics."
His victory was widely characterized as a win for the left-wing insurgency challenging the Democratic establishment. Just the News noted that Michigan has not sent a Republican to the Senate since Spencer Abraham left office in 2001, but the state has flipped in the last three presidential elections, making the general election against Republican Mike Rogers a genuine battleground contest.
El-Sayed has already drawn fire for his combative posture since winning the primary. He dared Trump to keep attacking him, framing the attention as fuel for his campaign. He has also refused to distance himself from controversial left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, a decision that prompted Senator John Fetterman to warn that El-Sayed has put the Michigan Senate seat "in play" for Republicans.
The timeline matters. Elkomy began working at IARA in 1999, the same year Treasury later alleged the organization's overseas branches sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to bin Laden. She remained employed there through at least 2004, when the Treasury Department publicly designated IARA a global terrorist organization.
El-Sayed's parents immigrated to the United States in the early 1980s. They later split and each remarried. Elkomy eventually moved back to the Middle East after remarrying, then relocated to the United States again. She currently works as a nurse practitioner in Missouri.
Several questions remain unanswered. When exactly did Elkomy leave IARA, in 2004 when the designation hit, or later? What specific role did she hold? Which office or branch employed her? The Midwesterner's headline references documents establishing her employment, but the specifics of those documents have not been publicly described in detail.
And the most politically relevant question: what has El-Sayed known about his birth mother's employment at a federally designated terrorist organization, and why has he avoided mentioning her publicly? His campaign's silence in the face of the New York Post's inquiry does not answer that question. It sharpens it.
El-Sayed's combative general-election launch already raised questions about his temperament and judgment. This report raises a different kind of question, one about transparency.
Nobody chose their parents. But voters have every right to know whether a Senate candidate has been forthcoming about his family's connections to an organization that admitted in federal court to breaking American sanctions, and that the U.S. government accused of bankrolling the deadliest enemies this country has faced.
