Loretta Sanchez calls for new information in bombing that killed Orange County activist Alex Odeh 30 years ago
The 30th anniversary of the Oct. 11 terrorist bombing that killed anti-discrimination activist Alex Odeh has not only reinvigorated a national movement from groups seeking answers on the case but it also prompted U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez to double down.
Sanchez – whose district includes Santa Ana, where the attack occurred – on Friday sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch citing a comment from David Bowdich, the FBI’s Los Angeles field office assistant director, to the Orange County Register this month that the case is the “oldest open counter-terrorism investigation we have.”
“Given that statement from the FBI, I am requesting an additional update on what resources are dedicated to this open case,” Sanchez wrote. “If the FBI knowingly admits that this is the oldest open counter-terrorism investigation they have on file, then we must ensure that justice delayed will not be justice denied.”
Odeh, 41, was the West Coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee when he opened the door to his second-floor office on 17th Street in 1985, detonating a pipe bomb that killed him and injured several others. Odeh’s death came after he appeared on TV praising Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat as “a man of peace.”
In her letter Friday, Sanchez also wrote that her office remains open to hosting a closed briefing with the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, given the sensitive nature of discussing an open case.
The letter isn’t the first the Democratic congresswoman has sent to the department.
Sanchez’s effort began with a June 2013 letter to then-Attorney General Eric Holder requesting an update on the open case. The following month, then-Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik replied that the department and FBI have “longstanding policies to not release information of an ongoing investigation” and were therefore unable to provide any information.
Sanchez considered Kadzik’s letter “unsatisfactory and vague,” according to a press release from her office Friday. In November 2013, Sanchez, and three other members of Congress, replied with another letter to Holder asking for the names of suspects, their whereabouts, whether all suspects have been interviewed, whether there have been extradition processes and if any suspects have not been successfully interviewed.
“The FBI has not allowed the memory of Mr. Odeh to fade due to the passage of time,” David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office said Wednesday. “While exhaustive investigation has been conducted over three decades on this case, members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force continue to investigate proactively and generate new leads. I am hopeful that one day we will solve this case and deliver justice to Mr. Odeh’s family.”
In the years after the bombing, the FBI named three Jewish Defense League members as persons of interest, but they were never arrested.
In another November 2013 letter co-penned with Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., to U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Sanchez requested a hearing on the case, noting the last hearing was in 1986.
Neither letter generated answers.
“It’s the standard line that we hear on many cases, but I think this one is important – it’s a civil rights one, and I wish (Holder) would have really put his shoulder to the grindstone,” Sanchez said.
But she sees Holder’s exit from the office as an opportunity.
“It’s a new attorney general, so we’re going to hope that she will take a new look at this and that she will put her resources to try to get to the bottom of this,” Sanchez said.
Source: www.ocregister.com