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The Manhasset Times, Friday, December 23, 2016
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Muslim woman allegedly made up story of attack Yasmin Seweid charged with filing false police report B Y N O A H M A N S K A R Seweid’s story after investigating thought they saw one of them on The New Hyde Park woman who told police she was attacked for being Muslim by three white Donald Trump supporters allegedly admitted to police last Wednesday that her account was a lie. Yasmin Seweid, 18, was charged Dec. 14 with filing a false police report after recanting her story about the men trying to rip her religious headscarf off her head and calling her a terrorist while invoking the Republican president-elect’s name, according to multiple news reports. Seweid, a Baruch College student, appeared in court Wednesday with her father, Sayeed Seweid, the New York Daily News reported. She faces up to a year in jail if convicted. Unnamed NYPD sources told DNAinfo New York that officers could not find any surveillance video or witnesses corroborating
the alleged attack for nearly two weeks. Police decided to charge her criminally because of the amount of resources the NYPD invested and the high-profile, politically charged nature of the case, DNAinfo reported. Seweid originally said three drunken white men taunted her on the 23rd Street subway platform while they waited for an uptown 6 train, according to news reports and an account Seweid posted on Facebook. She claimed they ripped her backpack and tried to remove her hijab, or headscarf, while onlookers did nothing to help until she got off the train at Grand Central Station. Seweid was reported missing Dec. 7 after she left home for a relative’s house without telling her parents. She was found safe about three days later. Police released descriptions of Seweid’s alleged attackers and
a surveillance video following Seweid off the train. An unnamed police source told the Daily News that Seweid allegedly made up the story because she had broken a curfew her parents had set. Abdul Aziz Bhuyian, president of the Hillside Islamic Center, the New Hyde Park mosque Seweid’s family regularly attends, said he could not speak to the family’s dynamics, but said they just want to be out of the spotlight in this trying time. “They need help,” Bhuyian said. “The family right now, they want to be left alone.” In a since-deleted Facebook post, Sara Seweid, Yasmin’s sister, criticized the NYPD’s handling of the investigation and said the media made things worse for her family members by camping outside their home and publishing false information. Yasmin Seweid “has dealt Continued on Page 57
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