Woman faces hate crime charges after confrontation with man wearing ‘Palestine’ shirt and his pregnant wife

DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. (AP) – A suburban Chicago man faces hate crime charges for allegedly confronting a Palestinian American wearing a sweatshirt that read “Palestine” and trying to knock his cellphone out of his pregnant wife’s hands while recording the encounter, authorities and the man said.

Alexandra Szustakiewicz, 64, appeared in court Monday to be arraigned on two counts of hate crime and misdemeanor disorderly conduct. A DuPage County judge ordered a Darien woman not to contact the victims and to stay away from the restaurant where police say the confrontation occurred Saturday. Szustakiewicz’s next hearing is scheduled for December 16.

There was no immediate response to a message left Tuesday for her public defender, Kendall Pietrzak, seeking comment.

Szustakiewicz was at a Panera Bread restaurant in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove on Saturday “when she confronted a man and yelled profanities at his Palestine sweatshirt,” the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office and Downers Grove police said in a statement Monday. .

She allegedly “tried to knock a cellphone out of the hands of a woman who was with a man when she began videotaping the event,” she added.

The complaint filed against Szustakiewicz, who was arrested on Sunday, alleges that she “committed a hate crime based on the alleged national origin” of both victims.

DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said in a statement that “this type of behavior and the prejudices that accompany it have no place in a civilized society.”

The man accused of confronting Shustakiewicz said he was wearing a hoodie with the word “Palestine” written on it when she approached him and screamed obscenities at him, trying to hit his pregnant wife, whom he was shielding as she filmed Shustakiewicz on her cellphone.

Waseem Zahran he told the Chicago Sun-Times. This wasn’t the first time he’d been harassed for wearing a sweatshirt, and he expects it won’t be the last.

“Since I was a child, I saw my mother’s threats, my parents’ screams and my cousins’ screams. But this was the first time I was attacked,” Zahran told the newspaper.

He testified that he repeatedly tried to defuse the situation, even after Szustakiewicz allegedly punched him in the face, and that before and after the repeated attack he tried to throw hot coffee on his wife.

Zahran said Shustakiewicz continued to attack his wife even after he told her she was pregnant.

“I don’t care,” she replied.

In a statement Monday issued by the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, he said he was a “born and raised American who took his wife to lunch.” I couldn’t do it simply because I was Palestinian.”

CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab condemned the attack.

“We have long seen how European migrants like this woman have a bizarre sense of entitlement to regularly harass and accoste indigenous Palestinians in their ancestral homeland, knowing that they enjoy complete impunity and knowing that their victims have no escape,” she said. Rehab in a statement.

“Now, shockingly but not surprisingly, the same anti-Palestinian hatred has followed them to their new homeland, here in America, where they were born and raised.”