The wife of a man convicted of terrorism-related charges was spotted sitting among the tents of anti-Israel protesters at Columbia University who have occupied parts of campus for nearly two weeks.
New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday that the husband of a woman spotted at the demonstration had been “arrested for and convicted for terrorism on a federal level.” Adams also said at a press conference on Wednesday that “outside agitators” were influencing the Columbia demonstration, which ultimately led to a large group of people taking over Hamilton Hall on the school’s campus before NYPD officers cleared them out and arrested dozens of people on Tuesday night.
While Adams did not name the terrorist or his wife, Sami Al-Arian had posted on social media that his wife, Nahla, had joined the anti-Israel protesters at Columbia last week, The New York Post reported.
My wife Nahla in solidarity with the brave and very determined Columbia University students. pic.twitter.com/ximkHFbZeo
— Sami Al-Arian (@SamiAlArian) April 26, 2024
In 2006, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to offering support to the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Kuwait-born convicted terrorist was a computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida and was deported from the country in 2015 after his prison sentence ended.
Authorities said Nahla was not a part of the mob of protesters who broke into Hamilton Hall. NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism Rebecca Weiner said, “We have no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing on her part but that’s something I wouldn’t want influencing my child if I were a parent of somebody at Columbia.”
Mayor Adams addressed the terrorist wife’s presence during his appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“At what point, Mr. Mayor, did you and the NYPD view this as something more than a student-led protest?” host Willie Geist asked. “You mentioned the outside agitators. Columbia talked about them and their students. They said it became clear to them that it wasn’t just students inside that building. At what point was it known to you that this was something more and that there were people who maybe had plans for worse than what some of the students were up to?”
“I believe that when we started seeing footage and we were able to identify what was always my belief based on some of the organization’s individuals, but once we were able to actually confirm that with our intelligence division and one of the individuals’ husband was arrested for and convicted for terrorism on a federal level,” Adams said.
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“Once we were able to identify some of the other people, I knew that there was no way I was going to allow those children to be exploited the way they were being exploited and many people thought that this was just a natural evolution of a protest. It was not,” he added.