Claim linking Abdul El-Sayed’s mother to charity with ties to Hamas, terrorist groups is missing key context

In August 2026, after Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Party primary, a claim circulated online about his mother’s supposed ties to terrorist organizations abroad. 

According to posts from Republican and right-leaning social media accounts on X and Facebook, Fatten Elkomy allegedly worked for a “terror group” that provided direct financial support to Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Taliban — Afghanistan’s de facto rulers, whom the U.S. also has designated a terrorist group — and Osama bin Laden, the founder of the militant group al-Qaida. 

This claim is missing significant context. It originated with reporting from The Midwesterner (archived), a conservative news website based in Michigan. The outlet published court documents indicating that from at least 1999 to 2002, Elkomy, El-Sayed’s biological mother, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, a former humanitarian aid organization that shut down after the U.S. Treasury Department said the larger network it was part of was supporting terrorism. 

It was not possible to find any evidence the Islamic American Relief Agency, specifically, knowingly financially supported terrorists and militant groups. The Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA-USA) was a branch of the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA). It is the latter that the Treasury accused of directly supporting Hamas, the Taliban and bin Laden. 

While the Department of Justice convicted several of IARA-USA’s former officers for engaging in prohibited financial transactions with Iraq, as further outlined below, no charges of terrorism or knowingly supporting terrorism were ever brought against IARA-USA or its officers.

Roxie Richner, a spokesperson for El-Sayed’s campaign, said via email that his biological mother “was working to help orphaned children.”

Richner also accurately pointed out that Elkomy, now a psychiatric nurse practitioner in Missouri, was “never accused of any wrongdoing and was not charged or named as a defendant” in the IARA-USA indictments. It was not possible to find any evidence that Elkomy knew of any alleged or actual criminal conduct undertaken by either IARA or IARA-USA. 

We have not rated this claim because whether IARA-USA was complicit in IARA’s alleged conduct is open to interpretation and the Treasury never publicly produced documentation to back its claims about IARA. A reader’s opinion may also vary on whether IARA-USA’s alleged conduct justifies it being referred to as a terrorist group.

Court documents that IARA-USA filed say the agency “provided charitable and humanitarian aid to refugees, orphans, victims of human and natural disasters, and other poor and needy persons and entities throughout the world, with no regard to faith or political affiliation” (Section 9, Page 3). At least one local news report from July 2008 says IARA-USA’s website offered an orphan sponsorship program (archived). 

It is also worth noting that El-Sayed’s campaign website says he was raised by his stepmother and his father, not Elkomy. His campaign team did not answer a question about his current relationship with Elkomy. 

Here’s what we know about his biological mother’s alleged ties to terrorist organizations abroad:

IARA vs. IARA-USA 

In 2004, the U.S. Treasury Department deemed the “worldwide network of the Islamic African Relief Agency” a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization that supported Hamas, the Taliban and bin Laden. 

The Treasury’s news release says the “international offices of IARA provided direct financial support” to bin Laden. It also accuses IARA of “moving funds to the Palestinian territories for use in terrorist activities, notably serving as a conduit to Hamas in one Western European country.” 

The federal agency’s news release does not state that IARA-USA, specifically, was involved in these actions. However, the Treasury considered IARA-USA part of IARA in its designation and seized IARA-USA’s assets. 

IARA-USA challenged the asset seizure in court, arguing it was a “completely separate, independent organization with its own Board of Directors, Officers and employees” (Page 8). (In 2004, IARA also reportedly denied that IARA-USA was a branch of IARA.) 

According to Charity & Security Network, which advocates for humanitarian aid efforts in crisis areas, the government also denied IARA-USA’s “repeated requests for release of the frozen funds for humanitarian and disaster aid, including assistance for victims of Hurricane Katrina” (PDF Page 10). 

The courts determined that there was enough evidence IARA-USA was a branch of IARA and that it would not “substitute our judgment” for the Treasury Department’s, even if the “unclassified record evidence is not overwhelming.” 

IARA-USA was one of many Muslim charities shut down in the wake of the United States’ 9/11 counterterrorism efforts. Civil rights and nonprofit advocacy organizations criticized the government for discrimination and unfairly targeting charities with policies that had “little prospect of stopping terrorism and at the expense of important humanitarian and human rights work” (PDF Page 22). 

Justice Department indictments 

In 2007, the Justice Department indicted IARA-USA on charges including illegally transferring funds to Iraq. The indictment additionally alleged that someone acting on IARA-USA’s behalf “falsely claimed” that a procurement agent of bin Laden “had never been an employee of” the Islamic American Relief Agency.

A year later, the DOJ charged IARA-USA and some of its officers with “eight counts of engaging in prohibited financial transactions for the benefit of U.S.-designated terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,” a former prime minister of Afghanistan and militia leader. Specifically, IARA-USA was charged with — but not convicted of — sending approximately $130,000 to a supposed orphanage housed in buildings Hekmatyar controlled. 

“This raises the question of when a nonprofit must withdraw support for a charitable project when someone with an indirect relationship is designated as a terrorist,” the Charity & Security Network wrote. “In this case, Hekmatyar appears to have owned the land the orphanage and refugee camp are located on, but payments did not go to him.” 

None of the DOJ indictments indicate that IARA-USA knowingly engaged in terrorism or the financial support of terrorism. The DOJ even makes that clear in one of its indictment news releases about IARA-USA: 

It is important to note that the indictment does not charge any of the defendants with material support of terrorism, nor does it allege that they knowingly financed acts of terror. Instead, the indictment alleges that some of the defendants engaged in financial transactions that benefited property controlled by a designated terrorist, in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

IARA-USA and several of its officers ultimately took plea deals and were convicted of transferring funds to Iraq in violation of federal sanctions. 

Elkomy’s role at IARA-USA

Court documents that The Midwesterner first reported on indicated that Elkomy participated in financial transactions for IARA-USA from 1999 to 2002, some of which involved sending funds to Iraq. Elkomy’s transfer requests also included money labeled for “child sponsorship” and “for orphans” (examples on PDF pages 54-76).  

(U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri)

These documents do not prove Elkomy knew anything about any possible criminal conduct, although they do show communication with some of the convicted IARA-USA officials. 

In a 2004 news article from the Columbia Daily Tribune, Elkomy said IARA-USA had no terrorist ties.

“I’ve been working there serving orphans and children with at least one deceased parent, and it breaks my heart they’re not going to get any help,” the newspaper quoted her as saying.

Elkomy also reportedly told the Daily Tribune that she worked there from 1999 to 2004, and that FBI agents interviewed her for three hours about her work there. 

The Midwesterner attributed Elkomy’s quote about orphans to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. We could not find that particular news article and it’s unclear whether the quote ran in multiple newspapers. 

The bottom line 

The claim that El-Sayed’s mother worked for a terrorist organization is misleading. It is more accurate to say that Elkomy worked for a charity with connections to another charity that was shut down after the Treasury Department accused it of directly supporting terrorists. 

The charity Elkomy worked for — the Islamic American Relief Agency, or IARA-USA — was convicted of illegally sending funds to Iraq and indicted on charges of supporting an orphanage an Afghan warlord controlled. There is no evidence Elkomy herself was aware of these actions or was doing anything other than helping orphans, as El-Sayed’s campaign claimed.