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News :: Miscellaneous |
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A Muslim student was beaten in CampusTown Sunday morning |
Current rating: 0 |
by Paul Wood
(No verified email address) |
21 Dec 2001
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this is a repost from the News Gazette
about the beating of a Muslim Student Sunday |
By PAUL WOOD
© 2001 THE NEWS-GAZETTE
Published Online December 20, 2001
CHAMPAIGN – A Muslim student was beaten by a Campustown mob Sunday morning in what he described as a racially motivated attack.
Saleem Mahjub, a senior in mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois, was attacked shortly before 3 a.m. Sunday outside an apartment building near the intersection of Fifth and John streets, in Champaign.
While his brother and friends were held back by several men, Mahjub was beaten by at least six men, one of whom hit his nose with a blunt object. Mahjub was taken by ambulance to Carle Foundation Hospital, where he received stitches and was treated for a broken nose.
He is recovering in Barrington, a Chicago suburb where his parents live.
Mahjub said Wednesday that the men who attacked him blamed him for the Sept. 11 attacks on America. His family is originally from Tunisia.
The student had left a celebration with his brother, also an engineering student, and a couple of Muslim friends.
"These people attacked us because we are Muslim/Arabs," said Mahjub, 24, in an e-mail to the News-Gazette. "(We) are 100 percent American."
Champaign police Assistant Chief John Murphy said investigators will be talking to residents of a nearby apartment building. He said the department has been treating Mahjub's attack as an aggravated battery, not a hate crime, because the initial report did not mention racial slurs.
"If what he is alleging they said is true, that's very important to us," Murphy said. "We've been taking it very seriously as an aggravated battery."
A second report filed Wednesday by Ghazy Mahjub, Saleem Mahjub's brother, made explicit the racial slurs and gave the name of a man he believes was an attacker. He said he told officers at the scene Sunday about the racial threats, but Murphy said the hate crime element is not in the original report, which Murphy characterized as "unusually detailed."
UI officials also said they were unaware of hate crime allegations immediately after the attack. Dean of Students William Riley said the university was waiting for a copy of the police report to begin its own formal investigation.
"We will look at it in its broadest context of being an assault, and now we will log it in the way that this is being depicted, as a hate-motivated crime," he said.
Riley said that any student found to have assaulted another student faces a stern response, with expulsion a possibility.
Mahjub said his parents have contacted lawyers and may seek another route to go after his assailants. |
See also:
http://www.newsgazette.com
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