CAIR-Chicago

🚨GOOD NEWS ALERT!

Hate crime charges were filed last night against a woman who terrorized a Palestinian couple at a Downers Grove Panera Bread.

Alexandra Szustakiewicz was arrested last night and arraigned in court this morning. She was charged with two hate crime counts and disorderly conduct. Alexandra had verbally and physically attacked a Palestinian man and his pregnant wife for wearing a Palestine hoodie. The incident was caught on the following video.

CAIR-Chicago thanks the Downers Grove Policy Department and the DuPage County State Attorney’s Office for their swift investigation and action.

“I'm a born and raised American who took his wife out for lunch. I was not able to do that simply because I was Palestinian,” said Waseem who shielded his wife from several punching attempts by the attacker.

CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab condemned the attack and called for action:

“We have long seen how European migrants like this woman feel a bizarre sense of entitlement to regularly harass and accost native Palestinians in their ancestral homeland, knowing they enjoy full impunity and knowing their victims have no recourse. Now, shockingly but not surprisingly, that same anti-Palestinian hatred has followed them into their new homeland, here in America, where they were born and raised.

“She also expected impunity, taking swipes at a pregnant woman and allegedly saying ‘I don’t care’ when informed of her condition, and ‘this is my land.’ Their crime: breathing while Palestinian.

“Fortunately, ours is a country of laws. This alleged shameful and abusive behavior has to be understood and called out for what it is, not only in its horrid details but in the context of the larger hateful phenomenon of which it comes; it cannot and will not have a home here.”