New Yorkers, including the city’s mayor, and several national US organizations, on Wednesday strongly condemned the attack of a taxi driver believed to have been targeted because he is a Muslim.
The attacker, a 21-year-old man who was reportedly drunk at the time of the incident, has been arrested and charged with attempted murder as a hate crime after he attacked Ahmed Sharif on Tuesday evening.
The man was 43-year-old Sharif’s first fare of the night, the Taxi Workers Alliance said in a statement. As the cab headed for Times Square, the passenger began a friendly conversation with Sharif about his religion, asking him if he was fasting in observance of the Muslim month of Ramadan.
After a few moments of silence, the man “suddenly started cursing and screaming,” the statement said.
“He yelled ‘Assalamu Alaikum. Consider this a checkpoint,’ and then slashed Mr Sharif across the neck. As Mr Sharif went to knock the knife out, the perpetrator, continuing to scream loudly, cut the taxi driver in the face [from nose to upper lip], arm and hand,” the alliance said.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he had spoken to Sharif and “assured him that ethnic or religious bias has no place in our city.”
“This attack runs counter to everything that New Yorkers believe, no matter what God we may pray to,” Bloomberg said.
The Taxi Workers Alliance linked the attack on Sharif to the controversy surrounding plans for Islamic cultural center near in New York’s Ground Zero.
Meanwhile, three teenagers who admitted targeting Hispanics for violence were sentenced on Wednesday to seven-year prison terms for their roles in the 2008 killing of an Ecuadorean immigrant, and a fourth teen who had met the others on the night of the killing received a six-year sentence.
The killing focused the national debate over immigration on New York’s Suffolk County.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in