Old articles resurfacing online reveal that Michigan Senator-elect Abdulrahman El-Sayed sharply criticized the Obama administration over the killing of al-Qaeda senior operative Anwar al-Awlaki, who was also an American citizen. El-Sayed called the drone strike “extrajudicial murder.”
1+In an article he published in 2011, El-Sayed complained that the U.S. military was conducting daily drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, and attacked the killing of al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son. “A drone strike committed extrajudicial murder of an American citizen. Shortly thereafter, an order was given to kill his 16-year-old son, also an American,” the senator-elect wrote at the time.
Beyond those inflammatory remarks, other articles he wrote reveal his positions on the Muslim Brotherhood, the terror organization from which Hamas emerged. El-Sayed warned that their rise to power in Egypt in 2011 could lead to radical socialist economic policies, but at the same time faced criticism over his own ties to the organization, which he vehemently denied.
1+Criticism of his Muslim Brotherhood connections was based in part on claims that his half-sister said their family supported the organization, as well as a letter he signed calling on then-Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to “purge” the media and police. Today, El-Sayed disavows the Muslim Brotherhood and claims the criticism against him is irrelevant.