Pro-Palestine activist Mohamad Hamad, detained for over a year, details FBI harassment and profiling

Held for more than a year in a maximum-security Pennsylvania prison without trial, Lebanese-American activist Mohamad Hamad has spoken publicly for the first time about what he describes as an escalating campaign of FBI surveillance, intimidation and Islamophobic profiling.

In testimony to The New Arab, the 24-year-old former Penn State student alleges that federal agents twice raided his family home, monitored it with drones and helicopters, planted a tracking device on his car and branded him a “Hamas operative” in court after he was accused of involvement in pro-Palestine graffiti and possessing materials used to make homemade fireworks.

In July 2024, the Squirrel Hill synagogue and the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh office were spray-painted with phrases such as “Jews 4 Palestine” and an inverted red triangle. Hamad and 25-year-old Talya Lubit were subsequently arrested in October with “damaging religious property and conspiracy to commit an offence against the United States,” and placed in home detention. Lubit pled guilty and received five years of federal probation. However, the FBI also investigated Hamad and 23-year-old Micaiah Collins for being found allegedly in possession of materials that were used to create and set off fireworks. In April 2025, Hamad was arrested, while Collins remains under house arrest. 

The FBI and the Pittsburgh Police Department declined to comment when contacted by The New Arab.

Hamad's account comes as more than 20 advocacy organisations recently launched a campaign calling attention to his continued detention and demanding that the charges against him be dropped or that at least he is released back to home detention, according to another petition.

The campaign has brought renewed scrutiny to a case supporters say reflects the increasingly aggressive use of federal law enforcement against pro-Palestine activists in the United States.

Back in June, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh's Community Security Director and former FBI agent, Shawn Brokos, released a “security update” for the community after Hamad's social media campaign was publicised.

“ When Mohamad’s case surfaced, it was already the work of a young American Muslim man in my city being processed through a federal legal system that had already decided what he was before it finished deciding what he did,” said an anonymous member of the Palestine Solidarity Working Group and Drop the Charges, two organisations supporting Hamad’s campaign. “You're doomed from the beginning before you even sit in front of a judge.”

Hamad, who was under a “no-media rule” with his former public defender, has shared for the first time his experiences of surveillance, harassment and Islamophobic stereotyping by local and national law enforcement over the past two years.

The house that Hamad and his family lived in was raided twice by the FBI before his detainment last April. At 5 a.m., before the first raid, Hamad noticed people digging through his trash and confronted them until they revealed themselves as federal agents. After refusing to answer questions, the same agents went to Hamad’s father’s job at 11 a.m. and asked to search his house. 

“[The agents] tell my dad, "Ok, but while you're driving back, do not call Mohamad and anybody that's in the house,” Hamad said. “ I'm sleeping; my mom comes and wakes me up and tells me there are two guys here, and I already know who they are.”

The agents stated they had probable cause and secured the house for seven hours until receiving a warrant. Hamad and his family were forced to sit together in a room while eight more officers were called for backup. An officer then took his body camera off and put it on the table to face Hamad’s family while searching the house. 

“I wanted to make my prayers, and they wouldn't even let me do wudu,” Hamad said. “ I was a Penn State student, and I was in the middle of classes during the first raid, so I was trying to join my classes and had a final exam. They were like, ‘No, you can't.’"

Hamad's father, who was yelling at the officers to leave, was rushed to the emergency room during the search after falling and almost had a stroke from stress. Hamad's sister, Lulu, said the process was “extremely humiliating” and that agents claimed she was a "part of this” as well.  

“They searched my car, took my clothes out of my closet, threw them on the bed, on the ground,” Lulu said. “They, as part of evidence, took my school scrubs and my shoes as well. The whole thing was just so frustrating.”

Lulu said agents would come back to the house a few more times to ask Hamad or other family members questions. One of the times, their mother was asked if Hamad had built any tunnels underneath the house. 

“My lawyer and I kind of figured the way that the FBI works is that they don't do all this and then just leave you alone,” Hamad said. “They were following me with drones, helicopters, in person, on-ground surveillance teams… I have the aerial surveillance videos when they were focusing the camera on the house in my discovery as well. This was all the counter-terrorism task force of the FBI.”

From Aug. 2024 to when he was placed on home detention, Hamad said he received four tickets for reckless driving or speeding with no radar gun to back up the claims. After the second-to-last ticket was given to Hamad, law enforcement used that as a basis to tow his car and returned it with a GPS installed underneath it. 

“My lawyer calls the alleged detective; he was like, ‘Did you search the car?’ and he [said] no,” Hamad said. "When I go to finally pick up the car, the hood latch was broken. They scratched up the body, and they broke the interior of the car in a couple of places. It’s very clear they searched the car, so the cop lied to my lawyer.”

A few days later, Hamad was picking up food when he decided to honk at the surveillance car sitting across from his house and throw up a peace sign. 

“[The officer] looks away, acts like he's not looking, and rolls up his window,” Hamad said. “I paid severely for that because he called the police and said that I was driving recklessly. I leave, I take this exit [to my house], and I notice there's a police car right there.”

As Hamad passed the cop, he said the lights instantly turned on, and he was pulled over. Hamad was instructed to wait until a sergeant came, who then ticketed him for reckless driving and speeding with no radar gun as proof, and ordered Hamad to go to traffic-ticket court. 

Hamad, who was also a Traditional Guardsman for the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, was then called to come to his designated U.S. Air Force base in Moon Township, PA, by its general to sign pay stubs, noting this was “unusual behaviour” as he was not invited back after the initial house raid. 

“I immediately get on the phone with my friends and tell them I’m either being discharged or I'm being thrown in the military brig," Hamad said. “Finally, that day comes up. I go, and I give the military ID to the guard of the post, and he takes it. Usually they're supposed to scan it, and they give it back to you.” 

Hamad was instructed to park outside and then to step out of his vehicle. At least 10-to-15 federal agents stepped out of three unmarked cars in the parking lot, arrested him, and took him to the federal building in downtown PA.

He then waited around six hours until he was transported to a courtroom for his first detention hearing in shackles around his arms, legs, and stomach. 

“The beautiful thing that I noticed is that all my friends were in the back, in public, in support,” Hamad said. “That was awesome, but I was put in front of this judge, and there was nothing that they didn't say.”

Aaron Kuhn, a friend of Hamad who attended the detention hearing, said Hamad was repeatedly called a terrorist, a Hamas operative and referred to as ‘Mr. Hamas,’ instead of his last name, with no corrections made by Hamad's representation.

“Homemade fireworks are almost like an American tradition, not a weapon of war,” Kuhn said. “There are white guys who hoard guns and do all sorts of crazy stuff. If he wasn't a Brown kid, this wouldn't be a big deal. The vibe that they're trying to get to is like ‘Here's this scary Hamas operative making homemade explosives.’”

Kuhn, who also wrote a character letter in support of Hamad before the hearing, said the prosecution wanted to ban Hamad from entering all Jewish businesses within his community. 

“It really just goes to show how ignorant the whole prosecution is in this case," Kuhn said. "On top of that, it was surreal because one of the character witness letters was from me, who is a Jewish business owner, so it's just purely nonsense.”

Hamad's license was then suspended for eight months after beginning home detention. At 8 a.m. on 23 April 2025, over 10 FBI agents and law enforcement officers swarmed his family home and arrested him. Not once did he violate the rules of his house arrest. 

“They used the taking away of my license as a strategic benefit because they knew they were coming back with more charges to try and save face, so if I don't have a job within the house arrest period, it looks bad,” Hamad said. “Two days later, I would've gotten my license and actually been able to get a job, and I had jobs lined up, too.”

Alexandra Weiner, a former University of Pittsburgh faculty member who participated in the pro-Palestine encampments on campus, was at all three days of Hamad’s detention hearing and said she was horrified by the number of Zionist agitators there. 

“When the verdict came, Mohamad’s dad was crying in front of the 25 or so people who had shown up to support him,” Weiner said. “Meanwhile, a Jewish Chronicle reporter, a Chabad representative, and a local Jewish Zionist agitator were all smirking and laughing and trying to hear what Mohamad’s father was saying so that they could gloat about it.”

Hamad’s case is one of several student and federal repression cases targeting those who speak out in support of Palestine.  

“ The fact that this case, to begin with, was filed as a federal misdemeanour is extremely rare and , to me, is 100 per cent in line with Project Esther and with the plan to demonise speech that is around Palestine,” Melanie Ridden, Drop The Charges member, said. “That is just very racist in its core because there is a genocide going on, and to stand up against that is generally applauded if it was a different country. It's a sign of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments.” 

Several far-right media publications have reported on Hamad’s case over the past two years, but with headlines calling him a “self-proclaimed Hamas member” or a “Hamas sympathiser.”

“In some of the articles against him, they brought up the fact that this happened in the same city as the Tree of Life shooting, which is an insane comparison to compare killed people to washable spray paint,” said an anonymous friend of Hamad. “Because that comparison was made so much, I think a lot of people were really scared about being seen as antisemitic or promoting violence somehow if they spoke on his behalf.”

Weiner, who grew up going to the Tree of Life synagogue, said that people must understand how common it is to be doxxed or targeted for supporting Palestine because of the “ highly coordinated and incredibly well-resourced” Zionist organisations in Pittsburgh, such as Hillel and Betar. 

“They are all working together with millions of dollars that come in through Israeli government sources and Jewish corporations just to run these harassment campaigns,” Weiner said. “ Bodies like this hide behind the cover of the synagogues that they're aligned with to gain legitimacy in local communities to cover for the political activities that they engage in, whether that's repression or directly supporting the [Israeli] occupation, apartheid, and genocide.”

Hamad’s family wanted to make a motion to the judge of his case immediately and argue that his detention was wrong, but his lawyer did not do so until six months later. In November 2025, Hamad had a change-of-lawyer trial and argued for better representation, but was given another lawyer who has been difficult to reach. 

“My old lawyers mentally checked out of the case as soon as I got arrested; it became too much for them,” Hamad said. “ Then, I found out my federal public defenders were the ones who chose this new lawyer. I used to reach out to him every week, and he would maybe pick up once out of the fifteen times I would call him. He never even put himself on the [calling] list as a lawyer so all of our calls are on a recorded line. I gave up and I don’t reach out anymore.”

Over the past year, Hamad has lost several pounds from stress and frequently develops health issues from the food, noting that meat comes to the jail in bags labelled “not for human consumption.” He has also been put into a solitary cell at least four times with no notice or reasoning. Hamad’s next hearing date is undetermined.  

“We have this support community now, but it wasn't always like that,” Hamad said. “After the first raid, almost everybody abandoned me. I still think about every single day in here, and it hurts so much… There are people who have been waiting for two to three years for trial, and we are all supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, yet we are being treated as guilty before being proven innocent.”