New York City police arrested Stuart Seldowitz, a former national security adviser under President Obama, after videos showed him relentlessly harassing a street food vendor with Islamophobic insults, New York City Councilwoman Julie Menin confirmed.
Seldowitz faces charges of hate crime stalking, aggravated harassment, stalking at employment and stalking with intent to cause fear, the NYPD confirmed to The Daily Beast. A spokesperson added he was at a courthouse awaiting arraignment.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Menin, who said she had been in constant contact with NYPD’s 19th Precinct, decried Seldowitz’s actions as “absolutely horrifying.”
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“The fact that this individual was targeting this vendor, coming to this vendor’s place of business again and again and again on a repeated basis and spewing vitriolic hate speech and threats is wholly unacceptable,” Menin said.
Seldowitz, who from 1999 to 2003 served as deputy director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs, threatened Mohammed, a 24-year-old street vendor, as well as his family on numerous occasions.
“You should learn English, it’ll help you when they deport you back to Egypt and the Mukhabarat wants to interview you,” Seldowitz was filmed saying in one such video.
Seldowitz subsequently lost his chairman post at Gotham Government Relations after the videos went viral.
“We have to have no tolerance for this kind of behavior, which clearly rises to the level of aggravated harassment,” Menin told The Daily Beast.
“We have a significant Jewish population and a significant Muslim population in our community, and that’s why whenever there is hate speech, it is absolutely important that it be called out immediately because it cannot be tolerated,” Menin added.
Menin said that his actions clearly constituted hate speech. An NYPD spokesperson told Rolling Stone that the department’s Hate Crimes Task Force was involved in investigating the incident.
Before his arrest, Seldowitz attempted to justify his comments to The Daily Beast. “There should be some comment back to someone who is endorsing terrorism and the killing of innocent civilians,” he said.
Mohammed, who declined to share his last name, later told The Daily Beast that he’d received an outpouring of support from the New York City community after the videos went viral.
