Who killed Alex Odeh, whose 1985 bombing death in Oklahoma was led by UCI protesters? – Orange County Register

Helena Odeh with a family photo from 1985 showing her father Alex Odeh with his daughters, taken shortly before his death. She stands next to her father’s statue at the Santa Ana Public Library in 2015. (File photo by LEONARD ORTIZ, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Before police tore it down Wednesday, a banner fluttered from the second-floor balcony of UC Irvine’s physics lecture hall:

“Alex Odeh Hall,” it said.

But who was Alex Odeh?

Nearly 40 years ago, a pipe bomb exploded as Odeh opened the door to his office on East 17th Street in Santa Ana, killing him and wounding seven others.

Odeh was the southern regional director of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. A Palestinian-born Christian and U.S. citizen who lived in Orange County for most of his adult life. He was celebrated as a peace activist who advocated for civil liberties for Arab Americans and human rights around the world, as a poet who published “Whispers in Exile,” and as a lecturer in Middle Eastern history and Arabic language at Coastline College and Cal State Fullerton.

When he died at the age of 41, he was also a husband and father of three girls. And despite many decades, tips, investigations, public identification of suspects, extradition requests and a $1 million reward offer from the FBI, his murder remains officially unsolved.

Odeh was almost dead while he was alive. His killing could be seen as a harbinger of the bloody conflict that is gripping the Middle East and spreading to American college campuses today, or as an early salvo in the violent back-and-forth that shows no sign of abating.

A 6-foot-tall statue of Odeh outside Santa Ana’s main library celebrates his legacy, but has been defaced with blood-red paint by vandals over the years.

The Middle East conflict reached Orange County long before the current protesters were born.

Kidnapped

It was a terribly stressful time. On October 7, 1985, the Palestine Liberation Front hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. Terrorists killed Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish-American tourist who used a wheelchair, and demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners.

A few days later, Odeh appeared on the TV news show “Nightline” to introduce the Palestinian-American voice. He engaged in oral argument with a representative of the Jewish Defense League, condemned terrorism and suggested that America should give PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat more credit for helping to free other Achillo Lauro passengers, and said , Arafat was, according to several reports, a man of peace.

The ADC office in Santa Ana was not the first to be bombed. Two people were injured in an explosion in Boston just two months earlier. Whoever was responsible for the Santa Ana attack must have been planning it for some time, so it may not have been revenge over Odeh’s on-air comments that sparked it, some have speculated.

But on October 11, 1985, the day after his appearance on “Nightline,” Odeh was dead. He was scheduled to speak at a synagogue in Fountain Valley later that day.

President Ronald Reagan expressed his condolences. The Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee condemned the murder. But Irv Rubin, chairman of the Jewish Defense League, was quoted as saying, “I have no tears for Mr. Odeh,” “He got exactly what he deserved,” and “My tears were used up when I cried for Leon Klinghoffer cried.”

Fruitless

A month later, the FBI publicly linked this and two other bombings to the Jewish Defense League. Rubin, its leader, criticized the FBI for smearing it without evidence, saying the FBI “could take their possible connection and plant it.” A few months later, the FBI classified the bombing as terrorism, but backed away from its initial claims Statements and said the Jewish Defense League was “probably” responsible for the Odeh attack and four others, but that further investigation was needed. Rubin again denied his organization’s involvement.

The FBI identified three suspects believed to be connected to the Jewish Defense League who fled to Israel shortly after the bombing. A woman was arrested in 1988 over another bombing but was also suspected of having ties to the Odeh bombing. Her husband, who lives in Israel, was also charged in that bombing and was also suspected of the Odeh bombing. The jury was divided on the woman’s guilt and she left America to join her husband in Israel.

The US later demanded the couple’s extradition. They fought. The husband was eventually convicted of a bombing – not the Odeh bombing – but his wife died in an Israeli prison in 1994 while awaiting extradition to the United States

In April 1994, the Alex Odeh Memorial Statue was erected. “For him, Jews, Christians and Muslims were all children of Abraham,” says the inscription on the statue.

In 1996, the FBI announced a $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Odeh’s killers.

Rubin and another member of the Jewish Defense League were charged with conspiring to bomb the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City and the office of U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa in 2001. Rubin allegedly slit his throat and jumped over a railing at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles in 2002, in what officials call a suicide. His alleged accomplice, who allegedly knew the names of the Odeh assassins, was killed in a federal prison in Arizona in 2005.

The Odeh case has been described as the FBI’s oldest open counterterrorism investigation. For years, Orange County congressmen have asked the FBI and the attorney general for updates and introduced resolutions in Congress to commemorate Odeh’s life.

“While those responsible for the act of domestic terrorism that killed Alex Odeh have yet to be brought to justice,” the statement filed last fall by Rep. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, said The House of Representatives notes with deep sadness the death of Alexander Michael Odeh, a victim of domestic terrorism; The House of Representatives expresses its deep condolences to the grieving members of the late Mr. Odeh’s family and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; the Clerk of the House of Representatives shall transmit this resolution to the Senate and shall transmit a copy thereof to the family of the deceased; and when the House of Representatives adjourns today, it will be as a further mark of respect for the memory of Mr. Odeh.”

While the FBI and Justice Department have understandably declined to update Correa’s office on the status of an ongoing investigation, “Mr. Correa will continue to commemorate the life of Alex Odeh in the US Congress with this resolution – not only as an act of remembrance, but to continue to maintain interest in the investigation,” said Correa spokesman Adriano Pucci.

One day we may know who killed Alex Odeh.