Zainab N. Ahmad: The Pakistani-American Lawyer Fighting Terrorism and Investigating the Trump Campaign

Zainab N. Ahmad is a Pakistani-American lawyer who has built a reputation for herself as a skilled prosecutor with a particular focus on high-profile terrorism convictions. She was part of special counsel Robert S. Mueller’s team to investigate Russia’s 2016 election interference and possible collusion with Trump associates. Ahmad's remarkable career in law began when she joined the Eastern District of New York as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Criminal Division. There, she first worked on Brooklyn and Staten Island gang cases before being drafted into a terrorism investigation that centered on a plot to blow up fuel tanks and pipelines at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Ahmad's work on terrorism cases has been impressive, and according to a 2017 profile in The New Yorker, she has successfully prosecuted 13 terrorism cases since 2009 without a single loss. Among the high-profile cases she has prosecuted are U.S. v. Babafemi, where a Nigerian citizen was convicted of providing material support to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula at the direction of Anwar al-Awlaki; Muhanad al-Farekh, an American the government alleges provided material support to al-Qaida in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region; Alhassane Ould Mohamed, a Malian who murdered U.S. defense attaché William Bultemeier in Niamey, Niger, and was later involved in numerous other attacks and crimes; and Russell Defreitas and Abdul Kadir, conspirators in the 2007 John F. Kennedy International Airport attack plot, who were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. In addition to her work as a prosecutor, Ahmad has been actively involved in changing perceptions of Muslims in the United States. She believes that her work is an important part of counterterrorism efforts, and that the broader American-Muslim community rejects the distorted version of Islam that terrorist groups use to justify acts of mass violence. Ahmad believes that many American-Muslims feel that it’s their own culture and their own community that are being hijacked, which makes it a particularly important goal for them to hold accountable the perpetrators of terrorism. Ahmad has an interesting background, having spent summers in Pakistan and England as a child. She grew up in suburban Nassau County, Long Island, with her father and stepmother and two younger brothers, and also lived part-time with her mother in Manhattan. She had planned to be a hospital administrator, but after the September 11 attacks, she decided to pursue a career in law. She attended Columbia Law School in New York, on a full scholarship. She was briefly married, to a lawyer from Jordan, but is now divorced. Ahmad's multifaceted upbringing and her experiences as a Muslim-American have undoubtedly contributed to her success as a prosecutor. Her work on terrorism cases has been remarkable, and her commitment to changing perceptions of Muslims in the United States is admirable. She has made her mark in the US legal system, and her legacy as a skilled prosecutor and advocate for the American-Muslim community will undoubtedly endure.