A 64-year-old Illinois woman was arrested and charged with a hate crime after an attack on a Palestinian man at a Panera Bread in suburban Chicago that was captured on video.
Alexandra Szustakiewicz, of Darien, allegedly attacked Waseem Zahran on Saturday because she was wearing a Palestine sweatshirt at the fast-casual restaurant.
She appeared in court Monday for her arraignment on two felony counts of hate crime and one count of disorderly conduct.
A DuPage County judge ordered the woman to have no contact with Zahran or his pregnant wife and to stay away from the Lemont Road restaurant where police say the confrontation took place.
Szustakiewicz was at the diner in Downers Grove, a Chicago suburb, “when she confronted a man and shouted expletives over a sweatshirt he was wearing with the word Palestine written on it,” the newspaper said. The DuPage County Prosecutor’s Office.
She also allegedly “tried to knock a cell phone out of the hands of a woman who was with the man when the woman began filming the incident,” it adds.
A complaint against Szustakiewicz, who was arrested Sunday, alleges she “committed a hate crime because of the perceived national origin” of the two victims.
DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said in a statement that “this type of behavior and the prejudices associated with it have no place in a civilized society.”
Alexandra Szustakiewicz, 64, appeared in court Monday for her arraignment on two felony counts of hate crime and disorderly conduct
Szustakiewicz allegedly attacked Waseem Zahran (pictured) on Saturday for wearing a Palestine sweatshirt at the fast-casual restaurant
Szustakiewicz was at the restaurant in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove “when she confronted a man and shouted expletives over a sweatshirt he was wearing with the word Palestine written on it,” authorities said.
Zahran said he was wearing a hoodie with the word “Palestine” on it when Szustakiewicz approached him and shouted expletives at him while trying to hit his pregnant wife, whom he was protecting as she filmed Szustakiewicz with a cellphone.
‘She came closer to our faces and then started asking, “Are you Palestinian?” I was like, “Yes, that’s me.” And then she started screaming in my face,” he said ABC7 Chicago. “Then she started getting physical.”
Zahran told Chicago Sun Times It wasn’t the first time he was harassed for wearing the sweatshirt, and he doesn’t expect it to be the last. He said his family has long faced intimidation and threats because they are Palestinian, he said.
“Since I was a child, I have seen my mother threatened, parents shouting, cousins shouting. But it was the first time I was attacked,” Zahran told the newspaper.
He said he tried to de-escalate the situation several times, even after Szustakiewicz allegedly punched him in the face and tried to throw hot coffee on his wife, both before and after waving at her several times.
Zahran said Szustakiewicz continued to wave at his wife even after telling her she was pregnant.
“I don’t care,” he said, she replied.
Zahran said this in a statement sent on Monday by the Chicago Office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations that he is “a born and raised American who took his wife out to dinner.”
“I could not do that simply because I was Palestinian,” the statement read.
Zahran said in a statement that he is “a born and raised American who took his wife out to dinner.” He said: ‘I couldn’t do that simply because I was Palestinian’
“I’d rather have the video come out and talk about it publicly than keep quiet about it and let her get away from it,” he told ABC 7 Chicago.
CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab condemned the attack in the statement.
“We have long seen how European migrants like this woman have a bizarre sense of entitlement to regularly harass and accost indigenous Palestinians in their ancestral homeland, knowing that they enjoy complete impunity and knowing that their victims have no recourse Rehab said.
“Now it is shocking but not surprising that that same anti-Palestinian hatred has followed them to their new homeland, here in America, where they were born and raised.”
Szustakiewicz’s case is expected back in court on December 16. She is currently in pre-trial detention.