Former State Department official arrested for harassing halal food seller
The former State Department employee and national security official who was filmed harassing a halal food vendor in Manhattan and calling him a “terrorist” was arrested Wednesday and charged with a hate crime.
The former official, Stuart Seldowitz, 64, faces charges including aggravated intimidation and several counts of stalking, according to police.
The charges were filed after the salesperson, who police did not name but identified as a 24-year-old man, told police that someone had approached him several times while he was at work and made Islamophobic comments, causing him to feel “ Scared and irritated.”
In various videos posted on social mediaMr Seldowitz was shown photographing the seller, threatening to send his photo to “friends in immigration” and making Islamophobic comments.
In one clip, Mr. Seldowitz calls the salesman “ignorant” because he does not speak English, then makes derisive comments about Islam’s founder, the Prophet Muhammad. In another, after a brief interaction about the murder of children, Mr. Seldowitz says: “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian children, you know what? It wasn’t enough.”
Police say Mr. Seldowitz lives a few blocks from the halal cart’s usual location on the Upper East Side. Attempts to reach him Wednesday evening were unsuccessful.
In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Mr. Seldowitz said he was not Islamophobic and that he had targeted the seller only after he expressed support for Hamas. The videos do not show any comment from the seller other than asking Mr. Seldowitz to leave and saying he would call the police.
“At that point I got quite upset and I said things to him that in retrospect I probably regret — that I do regret,” Seldowitz said Tuesday. “Instead of focusing on him and what he was saying, I started insulting his religion and so on.”
Mr. Seldowitz said he had served in various positions in both Democratic and Republican administrations, including acting director of the National Security Council’s South Asia Directorate and a position in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Israeli and Palestinian Affairs . He no longer holds government positions, he said.
The incident came as tensions between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups have escalated in the weeks since the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7. -Islamic and anti-Semitic hate crimes and some angry encounters have gone viral.
In social media posts on Tuesday, both Mayor Eric Adams And Gov. Kathy Hochul denounced Mr. Seldowitz’s behavior, calling his comments “despicable.”
Mr Adams wrote: “Islamophobia is hatred. Simply. This vile, disrespectful rhetoric has no home in our city.”
Julie Menin, a city council member representing the Upper East Side, said in an interview on Wednesday that the incident was “completely and totally unacceptable” and had upset the local community and that she was pleased to hear that Mr. Seldowitz was in custody.
“This individual targeted this street vendor day in and day out, threatened the vendor, clearly committed hate speech that was violent in nature and contained threats,” she said.
Hurubie Meko reporting contributed.