AG Dana Nessel drops charges against group arrested in University of Michigan pro-Palestinian camps

Charles E. Ramirez, The Detroit News on May 5, 2025

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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Officials have dropped charges against a group accused of trespassing and resisting police when police removed a pro-Palestinian student encampment at the University of Michigan last May.

“When my office made the decision to issue charges of trespassing and resisting and obstructing a police officer in this matter, we did so based on the evidence and facts of the case," Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement Monday. "I stand by those charges and that determination."

Nessel said despite months of hearings, a district court judge hadn't ruled whether authorities had probable cause the defendants committed the crimes with which they were charged by her office and had not ordered them to stand trial. She also said the case became "a lightning rod of contention."

“Baseless and absurd allegations of bias have only furthered this divide," she said. "The motion for recusal has been a diversionary tactic which has only served to further delay the proceedings. And now, we have learned that a public statement in support of my office from a local non-profit has been directly communicated to the court. The impropriety of this action has led us to the difficult decision to drop these charges."

Hours before Nessel issued the statement, a group of religious leaders called on her to drop the charges against pro-Palestinian activists accused of vandalizing the homes of Jewish and non-Jewish officials. They also called on the state's top law enforcement official to recuse herself from the case.

"Dana Nessel, it's time to wake up and see the harm you are doing," said Rev. Joe Summers, the retired pastor of the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation in Ann Arbor. "Drop the charges and resist the politics of domination, endless war and genocide."

More than four dozen people gathered for an 8 a.m. demonstration Monday on a grassy patch on Washtenaw Avenue at the campus of the county service center, which shares the property with the 14A District Court and the Washtenaw County Youth Center.

The Transparency, Accountability, Humanity, Reparations, Investment, Resistance (TAHRIR) Coalition, a UM student group that organized and led pro-Palestinian protests on campus against the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, organized the event.

Summers was joined by the Rev. Jo Hatlem, pastor of the Shalom Community Church in Ann Arbor, Imam Steve Mustapha Elturk, president of the Islamic Organization of North America, and others. The speakers stood on the wet grass at a microphone and in front of a banner with the words "Drop the charges" spray-painted on it.

Hatlem said 14 members of her congregation were invited by the TAHRIR Coalition to attend a May 21, 2024, sunrise service on UM's campus when university police cleared the encampment of pro-Palestinian student groups on its Diag. Three of those members attended Monday's rally with her.

"If we are to believe Dana Nessel, those community members and students camping and peacefully assembling on the Diag are the violent ones, not the police who assaulted people with pepper spray, not the university profiting off of the death and wholesale destruction of an entire people, not prosecutors who are weaponizing our justice system," Hatlem said. "We demand that the charges are dropped."

Mustapha Elturk called the coalition members and the students who protested against UM's policies courageous.

"They are being criminalized and persecuted by the state for being what our faiths, our conscience, and our democracy require of us: Speaking truth to power," he said. "Attorney General Dana Nessel: prosecution of these young people, students who dared to criticize injustice, mirrors the darkest chapters of our nation's history. It echoes the McCarthy-era campaigns that sought to silence dissent and punish those who dared question war."

Officials with the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR-MI, praised Nessel's decision on Monday.

"We welcome the dismissal of these excessive and retaliatory felony charges, which never should have been filed in the first place," CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid said in a statement.

"But this moment demands more. All charges stemming from this peaceful protest should be dismissed. These prosecutions appear to have been driven not by law but by a desire to silence students and community members calling for the recognition of Palestinian human rights and accountability from the University of Michigan for its investments in Israeli weapons manufacturers. The continued prosecution of these individuals is a stain on our state’s commitment to civil liberties and equal justice."

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