Jewish Teens Charged In Hate Crime

**********************************************

Courtesy Of: WCBSTV.com

By John Slattery

Nov. 2, 2006

(CBS) BROOKLYN The Brooklyn District Attorney's office has filed hate crime charges againsts five Brooklyn teens, three of whom were charged as adults. The charges stem from an apparent assault of a Pakistani man.

Arrested were Benjamin Wasserman and Shulomi Bitton, both 16, and Yossi Friedman, 17. Two others will be tried as juveniles.

The DA has identified the victim as Shahid Amber, 24, a lab technician of Midwood, who says he was beaten by a group of Jewish teens wearing yarmelkes.

Amber says they injured his jaw and broke his nose. "When this kind of thing happens, this completely shakes me up," Amber says.

The incident happened Sunday night around 8 outside a Baskin Robbins/Dunkin Donuts shop on Avenue M near East 15th Street.

Amber, who is from Pakistan, says he was outside the shop eating an ice cream, when a group of 10 to 15 teens and young adults started taunting him with racial slurs.

"They were saying, you Muslim scumbag, you have f---ed up this country. You don't have the right to live here. Go back to your country,"

Amber told CBS 2 News.Amber says three of the teens came over to him, knocked the ice cream out of his hand, and spit at him in the face.

"I was cleaning my face, the spit from my face, and I see a punch coming to my face with brass knuckles on, and he hit me on the nose," he said.

His nose gushed blood as others joined in punching and kicking. Surprisingly, he says, when an ambulance and police arrived, his five attackers were still there.

Amber said he pointed out his five attackers to police and said, "I was telling the cops, these are the five people."

Those arrested were charged with assault, assault as a hate crime, menacing, aggrivated harassment and criminal possession of a weapon, for the brass knuckles.

The defendants who are charged as adults will face their next court hearing Friday. The two defendants who were charged as minors were released to their parents.

(CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)