NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – A former U.S. diplomat was granted supervised release on Thursday, a day after his arrest on hate crime charges for verbally harassing a halal food vendor in the Upper East Side.
Stuart Seldowitz, 64, a former adviser in the Obama administration, was involved in a confrontation with a Manhattan halal cart on Nov. 7 near East 83rd Street and Second Avenue. Videos of the incident showed him making offensive remarks to the halal cart vendors.
Seldowitz was arrested Wednesday and faced two counts of stalking in the fourth degree as a hate crime and aggravated harassment in the second degree.
In the video that went viral, he is heard questioning the vendors with statements like, 'Did you rape your daughter like Muhammad did?' and asserting, 'If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough.'
During his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday, Seldowitz's lawyer, Scott Bookstein, defended his client. 'The person standing before this court is not a warmonger or Islamophobe. He’s a peace-loving person devoid of hate for Muslims or anyone else,” according to the Daily News.
Despite these assertions, Bookstein suggested the halal cart vendors, identified as Mohammed Hussein, 24, and Baha Kamil, provoked Seldowitz, although he did not provide details on how they allegedly incited the outburst.
Hussein, one of the victims, told The Independent that Seldowitz mocked his religion and verbally harassed him on three separate occasions at the Adam Halal Food Cart.
Hussein described being labeled a 'terrorist' who 'supports terrorism' by Seldowitz, responding to these accusations by repeatedly telling him to leave.
Previously, Seldowitz held senior roles across presidencies, spanning both Democratic and Republican administrations. He served as the acting director for the National Security Council's South Asia Directorate and was the deputy director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs between 1999 and 2003.
As of November 2022, Seldowitz was a foreign affairs chair for Gotham Government Relations, a lobbying firm based in New York City. However, following the incident, the firm confirmed Tuesday that it has severed ties with Seldowitz, and he appears to have been removed from their website, as Al Jazeera reported.
The videos emerged amid increased acts of Islamophobia and antisemitism following the Israel-Hamas war.
The Manhattan Criminal Court issued a full Temporary Order of Protection for the victims and scheduled Seldowitz's next court appearance for January."