Democratic Senate candidate El-Sayed’s mother worked for Hamas, Taliban-linked group

ByMATHILDA HELLERAUGUST 20, 2026 13:16Updated: AUGUST 20, 2026 14:54The birth mother of Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed worked for a designated terror group that financed Hamas and the Taliban, the Midwesterner first revealed on Tuesday. The information in the report was separately verified by The Jerusalem Post.El-Sayed was mostly raised by his Egyptian father, Mohamed El-Sayed, and his father's second wife, Jacqueline. He does not mention his mother - Fatten Fathy Elkomy - often in his campaigns, as she remarried and returned to the Middle East when he was young.However, the Midwesterner was the first to suggest that this omission might be intentional.It revealed that for five years (1999-2004) Elkomy worked for the Islamic American/African Relief Agency (IARA). Headquartered in Khartoum, Sudan, with 40 offices throughout the world, IARA purported to work on health care, orphans, and disadvantaged people in areas of conflict.However, according to a US Department of the Treasury announcement on October 13, 2004, IARA engaged in a joint program with an institute involved in providing assistance to Taliban fighters, and also was responsible for moving funds to the Palestinian territories for use in terrorist activities, notably serving as a conduit to Hamas in one Western European country.Abdul El-Sayed, winner of the Michigan US, Democratic Senate primary, waits with Curtis Hertel, Chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, before a press conference in Detroit, Michigan, US August 5, 2026. (credit: REUTERS/REBECCA COOK)IARA was designated, along with five officials, on the same date.Subsequently, the Treasury revealed that IARA was tied to Maktab Al-Khidamat (MK), an organization co-founded and financed by Osama Bin Laden and which was the precursor organization of al Qaida.It also revealed that international offices of IARA provided direct financial support for Osama Bin Laden, and that a former Bin Laden lieutenant served as the director of IARA's operations in Afghanistan.In March 2007, the Department of Justice charged IARA-US with a 33-count indictment for illegally transferring funds to Iraq.Evidence used to secure those convictions in USA v IARA included 945 exhibits detailing phone calls, faxes, wire transfers, tax forms, emails, bank statements and other documents. Within the list of exhibits, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri in May 2010, Elkomy was mentioned 14 times, relating to eight wire transfers, five recorded phone calls, and a IARA transfer request of $24,607.34 to IARA's Iraq office.Mohamed Elkomy, her brother (and el-Sayed's uncle) is also mentioned dozens of times in the exhibits.Neither Mohamed or Fatten Elkomy were charged or indicted as co-conspirators in the case. No IARA individuals were actually charged with terrorism, but the organization did plead guilty to conspiring to violate financial sanctions to send money to Iraq, and the organization dissolved in 2016.When interviewed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2004, El-Sayed's mother denied any connections between IARA and terrorists, adding that she has “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."According to her LinkedIn, she has worked as a psychiatric Nurse Practitioner for Missouri Behavioral Health Services since July 2013.Who is El-Sayed?Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, was born in 1984 in Michigan to Egyptian immigrant parents.He studied at the University of Michigan, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and Columbia University, where he earned his MD. He also has a doctorate in public health.He ran unsuccessfully for Michigan governor in 2018 and became nationally known as a progressive/left-wing Democrat. He recently won the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Michigan in August 2026, defeating Rep. Haley Stevens. He will face Republican Mike Rogers in November.If elected, he would become the first Muslim elected to the US Senate.Central to his campaign is his criticism of Israel's conduct in Gaza and a war he describes as genocide.El-Sayed was condemned for comments he made following an attack on a Michigan synagogue in March, saying, “Hurt people hurt people."Follow us on Google