ANN ARBOR, Michigan — Federal prosecutors on Monday asked a judge to arrest and jail Zainab Aliasgar Hakim, the Canton Township woman they describe as the ringleader of an alleged campaign of threats and vandalism against University of Michigan leaders and Jewish organisations — days after the Justice Department expanded the case to 12 defendants with a superseding indictment. Prosecutors say Hakim, who was free on bond, destroyed evidence inside her own bedroom as officers arrived to make new arrests on October 29: investigators recovered a laptop that had been dunked in water, hidden under her bed under bags of clothes. Every charge in the case is an allegation; all 12 defendants are presumed innocent unless and until they are proven guilty in court.

Source: The Midwesterner, November 5, 2026 (reporting The Detroit News and the DOJ announcement)

The expansion came on Friday, when U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. for the Eastern District of Michigan announced charges against four more people — Henry David MacKeen-Shapiro, 23, Aaron Hunter Vonbargen, 25, of Ypsilanti, Joseph Mark Fisher, 23, and Srishti Sarana Sharma, 23 — bringing the total to 12, The Midwesterner reported from the Justice Department announcement, in which FBI Detroit Special Agent in Charge Jennifer Runyan joined Gorgon. The four join eight people first indicted earlier this year: Zainab Hakim, 23, of Canton; her sister Amatullah Aliasgar Hakim, 21, of Ann Arbor; Paige Elizabeth Feyock, 26, of Ann Arbor; Ahmet Kerem Korkaya, 28, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Jonathan Hongru Zou, 22, of Ann Arbor; Alexander Matthew Sepulveda, 23, of Chicago, Illinois; Mariam Muhammed Odeh, 24, of Dearborn; and Colin Hunter Weger, 24, of Ann Arbor.

What the indictment alleges: a two-year campaign to force divestment

According to the First Superseding Indictment in U.S. v. Hakim (Eastern District of Michigan), filed October 21 and excerpted by Reason's Volokh Conspiracy, the defendants — a group associated with the University of Michigan — allegedly 'orchestrated detailed plans to threaten University of Michigan leaders, law enforcement, and businesses with coordinated criminal acts' after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, aiming to force the university and other businesses to sever all perceived ties with Israel. The indictment says the group posted a list of demands on social media on or about October 20, 2023, requiring 'full and complete divestment,' and then prepared what they called 'autonomous actions' when the university did not comply.

The targets named in the indictment include the University of Michigan's President, Chief Investment Officer and Provost, members of its Board of Regents and their businesses, a university police officer, Rolls Royce Solutions America, Inc., Maersk, Inc., and the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit. Prosecutors allege the group used encrypted messaging apps, social media and overseas collaboration tools — including CryptPad — to research home addresses and plan night-time visits, and that the activity included spray-painted threats, broken windows, doors caulked shut and bike-locked, and glass jars filled with butyric acid and dye thrown into family homes, marked with red handprints and inverted red triangles.

The indictment gives dated examples. On May 15, 2024, at about 5:53 a.m., conspirators allegedly trespassed at one victim's home in the Western District of Michigan, littering the yard with small tents, sheets wrapped to look like dead bodies and a broken crib, and taping a divestment demand note to the door. On June 3, 2024, at about 1:38 a.m., the Hakim sisters and others allegedly vandalised a victim's law firm with red paint balloons and red handprints. On October 7, 2024, at about 4:20 a.m., five named defendants allegedly vandalised the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, spray-painting inverted red triangles and painting over surveillance cameras. In a May 21, 2024 encrypted chat quoted in the indictment, Korkaya allegedly wrote that a victim's 'entire family is now on my hit list,' and Feyock allegedly replied about getting the victims' children — messages prosecutors cite to show intent, and which the defence has not been shown to have answered in the reports published so far.

The wet laptop: why prosecutors want the alleged ringleader jailed now

The immediate fight is over Hakim's bond. According to The Detroit News, reported by The Midwesterner, prosecutors told the court on Monday that while preparing to arrest MacKeen-Shapiro and Vonbargen on October 29, officials called a Vonbargen relative to say a warrant existed; investigators suspect word of the arrests reached Hakim within the hour, because when officers arrived at the Detroit townhouse she shares with MacKeen-Shapiro, the people inside refused to open the door and officers had to breach it. 'The sabotaged MacBook had been recently dunked in water,' prosecutors wrote. 'Droplets remained on the screen and touchpad. All evidence points to Zainab Hakim either being tipped off by a conspirator, or hearing the police knock and announce, and destroying (or attempting to destroy) and hiding MacKeen-Shapiro's laptop computer.'

'This defendant's steadfast belief that she is supporting a righteous cause and has not done anything wrong is exactly what makes her dangerous,' prosecutors wrote in court records cited by The Detroit News. 'She knowingly and purposefully destroyed evidence and tried to hide it… Even the most-restrictive bond conditions would not have prevented her new crimes: obstructing and destroying evidence inside her bedroom. Bond is about trust.' Prosecutors also presented messages they say counter Hakim's claims not to hold antisemitic views. Hakim's side of the bond argument was not detailed in the reports available when this story was published; a judge has not ruled on the request in those reports, and the evidence-destruction claim is itself an allegation she has not been convicted of.

A second bond fight points the other way. Jamil Khuja, attorney for Korkaya, has asked the court — in a request filed October 14 — to end his client's GPS tether and lift his curfew, saying Korkaya began work in August as a fifth-grade science and mathematics teacher, and also coaches fifth- and sixth-grade soccer, at the Islamic Society of Milwaukee & Salam School; the filing says the tether disrupts lessons and the curfew restricts religious, family and social life, and includes a letter from school figure Othman Atta calling him 'a real role model for his students.' The Justice Department opposed the request by quoting the indictment's chats back at him: 'Korkaya conspired to threaten University of Michigan leaders, law enforcement, and businesses — demanding divestment from Israel by any means necessary,' the department wrote. When authorities raided Korkaya's home, The Detroit News reported, they found a Hamas flag and a painting of a beheaded Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister.

The case sits inside a wider campus fight Michigan readers have been living with for two years. The indictment describes a May 2024 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment' at the university at which local police documented 26 criminal incidents, and notes the group's stated aspiration to the acclaim of the 1960s Weather Underground. Separately, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged 11 students over a 2024 campus encampment in September 2024 and dropped charges against seven of them in May 2025 — a different state case from this federal one. The federal indictment also charges Hakim and Feyock with witness intimidation, alleging they planned in July and August 2024 to confront a student they believed was cooperating with federal authorities; prosecutors quoted Feyock as allegedly saying the student 'has to be neutralized.'

What happens next: the court must first decide the two bond questions — whether Hakim is jailed pending trial and whether Korkaya's tether and curfew are eased — and the 12-defendant case then moves toward motions and, unless pleas are reached, a trial in the Eastern District of Michigan at which the government must prove the encrypted chats, the night-time vandalism and the intent behind them. For the Punjabi and wider South Asian community in Michigan — students at Ann Arbor and families across metro Detroit — the case is a reminder that the Middle East war's American aftershocks now run through ordinary campus and courtroom life: the accused, the targeted university leaders and the Jewish Federation are all part of the same local community, and the line the court is being asked to draw is between protest, which is protected, and threats and vandalism, which prosecutors say are crimes. Awaaz Punjab will follow the bond rulings as they are handed down.