One of the 23 Midwestern activists who has refused to testify before a controversial Chicago grand jury had his family’s bank accounts mysteriously frozen over the weekend of May 6-9. Twin Cities Federal Bank later revealed it had closed the accounts, and would return the family’s funds.

On Friday May 6 the branch manager of Twin Cities Federal bank told Hatem Abudayyeh that he could not use his ATM card, and that the Bank Secrecy Act barred any release of his or his wife’s assets.
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression quickly mobilized a call-in campaign to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who is heading the Chicago grand jury investigation, and the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, with demands that the Abudayyeh’s funds be released. Both denied freezing the account. On Tuesday May 10 the bank informed Abudayyeh that the funds had been frozen by the bank itself, which was dropping the family as a customer. The bank said the family’s assets would be returned to them by check.
Abudayyeh’s attorney, Michael Deutsch, said, “In my opinion, the bank did not act out of the blue. I suspect that the FBI and U.S Attorney investigation caused the bank to overreact and illegally freeze the Abudayyehs’ banking accounts that had been there for over a decade.”