DOWNERS GROVE, Illinois (AP) – A suburban Chicago woman is facing hate crime charges after she allegedly confronted a Palestinian American man wearing a sweatshirt that said “Palestine” and tried to take away his pregnant wife’s cellphone while he was recording the video. Authorities and the man encountered each other, he said.

Alexandra Szustakiewicz, 64, appeared in court Monday for her arraignment on two felony hate crime charges and one misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge. A DuPage County judge ordered the Darien woman to have no contact with the victims and to stay away from the restaurant where police said the shooting occurred Saturday. Szustakiewicz’s next hearing will be held on December 16.

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

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

It was also alleged that “when the woman started recording the incident on video, the man tried to shoot the mobile phone in the hand of a woman who was next to him.”

The complaint filed against Szustakiewicz, who was arrested on Sunday, alleges that the two victims “committed a hate crime due to their perceived national origin.”

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 Szustakiewicz is accused of confronting said he was wearing a hoodie that said “Palestine” and shouting profanities when he approached him trying to hit the pregnant wife he was protecting while recording Szustakiewicz on his cell phone.

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

“Ever since I was a child, I saw my mother threatening, my parents yelling, my cousins ​​yelling. But it was the first time for me to be attacked,” Zahran told the newspaper.

He said he tried to de-escalate the situation multiple times, despite claims that Szustakiewicz hit him in the face and tried to throw hot coffee at his wife before and after shaking her repeatedly.

Zahran said Szustakiewicz continued to swing at his wife even after she told him she was pregnant.

“I don’t care,” he replied.

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

CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab condemned the attack.

“We have long seen how European immigrants like this woman feel a strange sense of entitlement to regularly harass and attack indigenous Palestinians in their ancestral homeland, knowing that they enjoy complete impunity and that their victims have no recourse,” Rehab said in the statement.

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

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