Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has a family connection that voters might want to know about before November. His father, Imam Dr. Mohammed El-Sayed, currently sits on the board of Life for Relief and Development, a Michigan-based Islamic charity with a very colorful history, including a U.S. government accusation that it helped funnel money to Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Tax forms show the elder El-Sayed has been involved with the charity since at least 2020. The group’s troubles with the federal government go back further than that. In 2004, the U.S. military and FBI raided Life for Relief and Development’s Baghdad facilities, hauling off 20 boxes and 12 computers over suspicions the outfit was aiding insurgents, the San Francisco Chronicle reported at the time.
It gets better. The charity’s public relations coordinator, Muthanna al-Hanooti, pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered agent for Hussein’s government, specifically for violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The U.S. government accused Life for Relief and Development of orchestrating a conspiracy to move American money through Jordan and into Hussein’s Iraq. Government documents stated that Life for Relief and Development funding probe reached the organization’s highest levels, noting that “LRD’s highest management levels, i.e., its President, knew of the conduct giving rise to the apparent violations and directed the funds transfers to Iraq via Jordan.” The charity eventually paid a $780,000 settlement, and the government dropped its case in 2014.
The Saddam connection is just the headline act. In 2006 the FBI raided the charity again, and in 2007 its then-CEO was indicted by a grand jury for violating money-laundering and sanctions laws. Agents confiscated records tied to the Islamic African Relief Agency, a group that was later shut down after it was found to have supported al-Qaeda. Life for Relief and Development also sent cash to an entity the FBI later concluded was Hamas’s Jordanian operation. Other than that, totally normal nonprofit stuff.
The family connections don’t stop with Abdul’s dad. His birth mother, Fatten Fathy Elkomy, briefly worked at the Islamic African Relief Agency, the same group later exposed for backing al-Qaeda. And his father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, once served on Life for Relief and Development’s board too. It’s practically a family reunion over there.
The Washington Free Beacon first reported the senior El-Sayed’s ties to the charity, and The Post has reached out to El-Sayed’s campaign and Life for Relief and Development for comment. Meanwhile, El-Sayed currently holds a 3.2 percentage point polling edge over Republican Mike Rogers in the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate. Rogers and the GOP have a lot of material to work with heading into the final stretch, and something tells us Michigan voters haven’t heard the last of this one.
