The Trials of Rasmea Odeh, Part Five — Did PTSD Make Her Do It?
Thank again to Eugene Volokh for inviting me to blog this week about my book, The Trials of Rasmea Odeh. Part One is here; Part Two is here; Part Three is here; Part Four is here.
Rasmea Odeh’s answers on her naturalization application were so obviously false that her first lawyer—William Swor of Detroit—proceeded straight to plea bargaining without filing pretrial motions. Swor was no pushover, having received awards from the Arab American Chamber of Commerce, the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Defense Attorneys of Michigan.
Swor negotiated an extremely favorable deal, with no prison time, but Odeh rejected it. After consulting with Deutsch and Fennerty, she opted to raise a political defense—condemning Israel for torture and conspiring with the U.S. government—under the guidance of the leftist lawyers, who entered appearances in the case.
But even a politicized defense had to deal with the falsehoods on the naturalization form.
Fortunately for Odeh, one of the world’s foremost authorities on treating torture victims lived in Chicago. Dr. Mary Fabri, had been director of Torture Treatment Services and International Training at the Kovler Center, and had consulted on torture care in Kurdistan, Rwanda, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, and Haiti. She m
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