BS BULLETIN:
- Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed wrote in 2012 that Shaima Alawadi was murdered because she had the “courage to wear a Hijab.”
- Police had already cautioned against assuming her killing was a hate crime.
- Her husband was later convicted of first-degree murder, with prosecutors arguing the anti-immigrant note found at the scene was planted to throw investigators off the trail.
A 14-year-old essay from Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is getting a very uncomfortable second look.
Days after Iraqi-American mother Shaima Alawadi was fatally beaten inside her El Cajon, California, home in March 2012, El-Sayed published an essay linking her death to racism, xenophobia and anti-Muslim hatred in America.
He paired Alawadi’s killing with the shooting of Trayvon Martin, writing that both had been “murdered in cold blood” because they fit stereotypes American society viewed as foreign, dangerous or evil.
El-Sayed went even further with Alawadi, writing that she was targeted because she had the “courage to wear a Hijab.”
There was one major problem. Police hadn’t established that. Investigators had found an ugly note near Alawadi’s body telling the family to go back to their country and referring to them as terrorists. But authorities publicly cautioned against immediately declaring the killing a hate crime.
El-Sayed nevertheless published his sweeping conclusion four days after Alawadi’s death.
Then the investigation took a dramatic turn. Police arrested Alawadi’s husband, Kassim Alhimidi, in November 2012 and charged him with her murder.
Investigators discovered that Alawadi had been planning to divorce her husband and move to Texas to be near relatives. Prosecutors said Alhimidi beat his wife and attempted to make the killing appear to be an anti-immigrant hate crime. The threatening note that helped fuel the original hate-crime narrative was determined to be a photocopy, according to reports at the time.
In 2014, a jury convicted Alhimidi of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 26 years to life.
Alawadi’s own daughter addressed the staged-hate-crime element during sentencing, telling her father that it disgusted her that he had made her mother’s killing look like a hate crime.
Now El-Sayed’s old essay is resurfacing as he campaigns for the U.S. Senate in Michigan.
The Washington Free Beacon, which dug back into the episode this week, reports that it could find no record of El-Sayed correcting his claims about Alawadi’s murder after her husband was convicted.
El-Sayed didn’t merely repeat a conclusion investigators had reached and later reversed.
Police were publicly warning people not to jump to that conclusion while he was using the still-unsolved murder to make a sweeping argument about American racism and Islamophobia.
The actual murder case eventually told a very different story.
DBS WIRE SOURCES:
- Washington Free Beacon — Abdul El-Sayed promoted infamous hijab hate crime hoax, despite warnings from police
- Twitchy — Deets of 2012 hijab hate crime hoax Abdul El-Sayed blamed on Islamophobia have come out and HOOBOY
- Los Angeles Times — Iraqi immigrant found guilty of murdering wife in El Cajon
- CBS News — Iraqi immigrant gets 26 years-to-life for killing wife in California
- ABC News — Husband arrested in murder of Iraqi-American mom, family called it a hate crime
