Four more activists charged with threats to U of Michigan officials over Israel ties

Four more people have been charged with participating in a criminal intimidation campaign against University of Michigan officials to try to force the school to cut financial ties to Israel, federal authorities said Friday.

The new indictment comes nearly five months after eight pro-Palestinian activists were charged with conspiracy for threats and vandalism at officials’ homes, some businesses and the Jewish Federation of Detroit.

Investigators have highlighted several incidents that made headlines in the past few years, including fake bloody corpses that were placed in a university board member’s yard and the 2024 spray-painting of anti-Israel messages at the home of Santa Ono, who was school president at the time.

Two of the four new defendants were arrested and made their first court appearance Friday, while the other two people were not in custody, said the US Attorney’s Office in Detroit.

The eight people charged in June have pleaded not guilty.

“From Pharaoh to Hitler to Hamas, those who terrorize Jews have been the bad guys. As Americans, our job is to fight the bad guys,” said US Attorney Jerome Gorgon Jr.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began with the terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack, pro-Palestinian protesters have demanded that the University of Michigan’s endowment stop investing in companies with ties to Israel. But the university has said it has less than 0.1% of its total endowment placed with funds that might include companies in Israel.

After the first round of charges, lawyers who represent pro-Palestinian activists in lawsuits against the university said the indictment appeared to “be a new low in the criminalization of student opposition to the human rights violations, war crimes, and genocide in Gaza.”

“The federal government is seeking to bring federal charges for acts traditionally reserved to local prosecutors,” said John Philo of the Sugar Law Center in Detroit.

In 2024, a pro-Palestinian camp on campus was cleared by police after a month. The university said it was a threat to public safety.

The original indictment said the defendants joined the “Gaza solidarity encampment” at the university, and, from the encampment, issued a statement saying, “We look to our martyrs and freedom fighters for guidance… the student intifada will never be silenced.”

After the university shut down the encampment, the defendants turned to individual targets.

The suspects held meetings to identify targets and searched online for information on those targets, such as personal addresses, photos, social connections, business ownership and other personal details, prosecutors said.

The defendants allegedly surveilled their targets, carried out counter-surveillance against police, discussed how to evade law enforcement, bought and distributed supplies, mapped out attack routes and coordinated on encrypted platforms.

The defendants discussed using poison, bombs and “psychological torture” against the targets and their families.

In one message, in May 2024, two of the defendants agreed to “kill,” “torment,” and “terrorize” their opponents and their families.

One of the suspects said a target’s “entire family” was on his “hit list,” that people “gotta die,” and another said the alleged conspirators should “get” the children of two targets.

During the vandalism spree, the defendants left notes with demands and threats, glued doors shut, broke windows and hurled glass jars filled with butyric acid, used as a “stink bomb,” into homes.

Several of the defendants discussed or researched security for Jews or houses of worship.

On October 7, 2024, four of the defendants vandalized the Jewish Federation of Detroit with inverted red triangles, a symbol Hamas uses to mark its targets in propaganda videos, painted over its surveillance cameras, and wrote in graffiti, “Fuck Israel,” “Free Palestine” and “Intifada.”

Luke Tress contributed to this report.