DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. (AP) — A suburban Chicago woman is facing hate crime charges for allegedly confronting a Palestinian man wearing a sweatshirt that said “Palestine” on it and trying to take a cellphone from his pregnant woman’s hands hitting a woman while she was recording the encounter. , authorities and the man said.
Alexandra Szustakiewicz, 64, appeared in court Monday to be charged with two hate crimes and one count of disorderly conduct. A DuPage County judge ordered the Darien, Illinois, woman to have no contact with the victims and to stay away from the restaurant where police said the confrontation took place Saturday. Szustakiewicz’s next hearing is scheduled for December 16.
A message left Tuesday for her public defender, Kendall Pietrzak, seeking comment on the allegations was not immediately returned.
Szustakiewicz was at a Panera Bread restaurant in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove on Saturday “when she confronted a man and shouted expletives over a sweatshirt he was wearing with the word Palestine written on it,” according to a press release issued Monday by the Het Openbaar DuPage County Dept. and Downers Grove Police Department.
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 filed 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.”
The Palestinian man accused of confronting Szustakiewicz said he was wearing a hoodie with the word “Palestine” on it when she approached him and shouted expletives at him as he tried to hit his pregnant wife, who he was protecting while she filmed Szustakiewicz with her mobile phone.
Waseem Zahran told the 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.
“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.
He said in a statement sent 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 couldn’t do that simply because I was Palestinian.”
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 ” said Rehab.
“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.”