Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign is facing renewed scrutiny after an Egyptian-American activist sentenced to life in prison in Egypt for alleged support of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2015 has emerged as a financial backer of his Senate bid.
Mohamed Soltan, 38, the president of the American Committee for Middle East Rights (ACMER), has personally donated to El-Sayed’s campaign. The organization he leads has also contributed to Fighting for Michigan PAC, the super PAC supporting El-Sayed.
Federal Election Commission filings show ACMER gave Fighting for Michigan PAC $25,000 on June 12. Soltan also made two contributions to El-Sayed’s campaign on April 15, with his individual giving reaching the federal contribution limit, according to campaign-finance records reviewed by the Midwesterner.
The contributions add another Islamist-linked figure to the network of donors and supporters surrounding El-Sayed, who won the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s open Senate seat earlier this month and is seeking to become the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate.
Soltan was sentenced to life in prison by a Cairo court in April 2015 in a case involving alleged support for the Muslim Brotherhood following the military’s ouster of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. The ruling came after Soltan had spent nearly two years imprisoned in Egypt and conducted a more than yearlong hunger strike.
After the Obama administration pressed Egypt for his release, Soltan was freed in May 2015 and returned to the United States. He relinquished his Egyptian citizenship as part of the process that allowed him to leave the country. Soltan is now president of ACMER, a Washington-based nonprofit that describes itself as advocating for human rights and U.S. policy in the Middle East.
ACMER’s $25,000 contribution went to Fighting for Michigan PAC, which has emerged as a major vehicle for supporting El-Sayed’s political career. Other ACMER officials have also contributed to El-Sayed’s campaign apparatus. ACMER Treasurer Muna Jondy gave $15,000 to Fighting for Michigan PAC on June 7 and $7,000 directly to Abdul for U.S. Senate on June 24, while ACMER Executive Director Kristina Blyad gave $1,000 directly to the campaign. Blyad also serves as treasurer of MERIT PAC, which gave El-Sayed $1,500 on June 3.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, El-Sayed’s mother, Fatten Fathy Elkomy, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, or IARA, from 1999 through at least 2004. The Treasury Department designated IARA as a global terrorist organization in 2004, accusing its international offices of providing financial support to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations.
Elkomy was not charged in the subsequent federal prosecution of IARA, and the records do not establish that she knowingly supported terrorism. She defended her work for the organization at the time, saying she was helping orphans and children who had lost parents.
El-Sayed’s father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, meanwhile, has served on the founding committee of the Islamic Society of North America since at least 2007 and previously served as president of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Both ISNA and CAIR were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the federal Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case. A federal judge later ruled that prosecutors had presented “ample evidence” connecting the organizations to Hamas. Jukaku has also become one of the largest financial backers of Fighting for Michigan PAC, contributing at least $200,000 to the super PAC.
The Muslim Brotherhood itself celebrated El-Sayed’s recent Democratic primary victory. The Brotherhood’s official website published an article describing El-Sayed as having “conquered the Zionists” and praised his opposition to U.S. military aid to Israel.
Taken together, the connections have continued to raise questions about the political and financial network surrounding El-Sayed as he prepares for the general election; the latest campaign-finance records add another figure with a documented history involving Islamic extremism to the growing list of people and organizations backing his Senate bid.
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