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    • Illinois woman charged with hate crimes in Panera Bread attack
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    Illinois woman charged with hate crimes in Panera Bread attack

    Online Niel Posted on

    Alexandra Szustakiewicz, 64, of Darien, Illinois, was charged with two counts of hate crime and one count of disorderly conduct, officials said.

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    An Illinois woman has been charged with a hate crime after she attacked a man for wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the word “Palestine” at a suburban Chicago department store, prosecutors and officials said.

    Alexandra Szustakiewicz, 64, of Darien, Illinois, was charged with two counts of hate crimes and one count of disorderly conduct, DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin and Chief Downers Grove Police Officer Michael DeVries in a statement. The charges stem from an incident Saturday at a Panera Bread in Downers Grove, a village about 23 miles southwest of downtown Chicago.

    Downers Grove police said Szustakiewicz was at Panera Bread shortly before noon local time Saturday when he “confronted and yelled profanities at a man” who was wearing a hoodie with the word “Palestine” written on it. Szustakiewicz then allegedly tried to knock a cell phone out of the hands of a woman who was with the man when the woman began recording the encounter.

    According to the statement, officers responded to a report of a disturbance at Panera Bread and Szustakiewicz was taken into custody the next day without incident. A complaint filed against Szustakiewicz alleged that she “committed a hate crime based on the perceived national origin” of the two victims.

    During his first court appearance Monday morning, a judge granted prosecutors’ request that Szustakiewicz have no contact with the victims or enter the Panera Bread where the incident occurred, the release said. Szustakiewicz is scheduled to appear in court on Dec. 16 for arraignment.

    “Every member of society, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation or any other individual characteristic, deserves to be treated with respect and civility,” Berlin said in a statement. “This type of behavior and the prejudice that accompanies it has no place in a civilized society and my office is prepared to file the appropriate charges in such cases.”

    A year later: Incidents of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate have increased since the October 7 attacks

    Civil rights organization: The victim protected his wife from the blows

    The Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Chicago), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, condemned the incident on Monday. The organization called Szustakiewicz’s behavior “shameful and abusive.”

    CAIR-Chicago said Szustakiewicz verbally and physically attacked a couple, identified as Waseem and his pregnant wife, because they were wearing a Palestine hoodie. The organization added that Waseem “protected his wife from several attempts to hit” during the encounter.

    The incident was caught on videoaccording to CAIR-Chicago, and shared on social media — including X, where it is it has garnered about 1.2 million views until Monday evening.

    In the video, a woman lunged at a person who recorded the incident with a mobile phone. A man then tried to stop the woman, pushing her back with his arm, asking: “What are you doing?”

    The video then showed the woman trying to hit the man, with a drink she was holding spilling onto the ground. The woman continued to try to pull the victims away while threatening to call the police.

    The man is later heard telling the woman to stop. The footage then showed the woman approaching the cash register, asking an employee to call the police.

    Moments later, the woman is caught on video trying to hit the person recording the incident, with the man stepping in between them. The man is heard telling the woman, “Get away from my wife.”

    The man and the person recording the video are then seen walking away from the woman as she appears to follow them. The video then shows the man pushing the woman back, causing them both to threaten to hit each other.

    “I’m a born and raised American who took his wife to lunch. I couldn’t do that simply because I was Palestinian,” Waseem told CAIR-Chicago.

    The latest incident amid rising Islamophobia and hate crimes

    CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab said Saturday’s incident, along with other recent hate incidents in the US, “reflect a larger pattern of hostility and intolerance toward Palestinian Americans and the Muslim community at large.”

    Between January and June 2024, CAIR documented nearly 5,000 bias complaints received nationwide—a 69 percent increase in complaints filed over the same period in 2023. The organization also released a report earlier this year, which found that CAIR received “the largest number of complaints it has ever received in its 30-year history” last year.

    The report documented more than 8,000 anti-Muslim hate complaints, and nearly half of those complaints were reported in the last three months of 2023. The report noted that the surge in Islamophobia and anti-Muslim incidents is primarily due to the escalation of violence in Gaza after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

    Numerous incidents have it caused fear among Muslim-American and Arab-American communities. About a week after the Oct. 7 attack, an Illinois man was charged with a hate crime after he fatally stabbed a 6-year-old child and seriously injured the child’s mother in what authorities said was a violent response to the Israel-Hamas war.

    In April, prosecutors said a New Jersey man was convicted of hate crimes after attacking a Muslim man near a food cart in New York. A woman from Texas was charged in June after authorities said she tried to drown a Muslim child at the swimming pool of an apartment complex.

    Last month, a New York woman was charged with an anti-Muslim attack after her pepper sprayed an Uber driver earlier this year, according to prosecutors.

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