Latest news with #PalestinianColumbia
Business Recorder
3 days ago
- Politics
- Business Recorder
Palestinian detained in France after rabbi hit with chair
PARIS: A Palestinian man was taken into custody after he threw a chair at a rabbi on a cafe terrace in a wealthy Paris suburb, a police source told AFP, in an attack France's main Jewish association condemned as antisemitic. According to the source, the suspect attacked Rabbi Elie Lemmel in the western Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Lemmel, who wore a traditional kippah cap and a long beard, was taken to hospital with a head injury. The assailant was arrested. Wife of detained Palestinian Columbia student says she was naive to believe he was safe from arrest The attacker is a Palestinian man residing illegally in Germany, said a source close to the case, adding that the man benefits from a status that offers a form of protection for people who cannot be deported to a conflict zone. An investigation has been launched into aggravated assault, prosecutors said. The rabbi said he had been attacked twice in the space of a week. Last Friday he was attacked in the northwestern town of Deauville when three drunk individuals hit him in the stomach. On Friday, the rabbi was talking to a person he had arranged to meet when he was attacked, receiving 'a huge blow to the head'. 'I fell to the ground and heard people shouting 'stop him', and I realised that I had just been attacked,' he told broadcaster BFMTV. 'I am very afraid that we are living in a world where words are generating more and more evil,' he said. The French Jewish community, one of the largest in the world, has faced a number of attacks and desecrations of memorials since the Gaza war erupted on October 7, 2023. In January, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) deplored what it called a 'historic' level of antisemitic acts. While welcoming the fact that attack was not fatal, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou deplored 'the radicalisation of public debate.' 'Day after day, our country is plagued by clashes fuelled by hatred,' he told reporters, also pointing to assaults against 'our Muslim compatriots'. The CRIF condemned 'in the strongest possible terms the anti-Semitic attack on the rabbi'. 'In a general context where hatred of Israel fuels the stigmatisation of Jews on a daily basis, this attack is yet another illustration of the toxic climate targeting French Jews,' the CRIF said on X. Yonathan Arfi, the CRIF president, said: 'Nothing, not even solidarity with the Palestinians, can ever justify attacking a rabbi.' France's Holocaust memorial, three Paris synagogues and a restaurant were vandalised with paint last week. A judge has charged three Serbs with vandalising the Jewish sites 'to serve the interests of a foreign power', a judicial source said on Friday. In 2024, a total of 1,570 antisemitic acts were recorded in France, according to the interior ministry. Officials say the number of such crimes has increased in the wake of the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 by Palestinian militant group Hamas, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people. The attack was followed by relentless Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which the Hamas-run health ministry has said resulted in the deaths of at least 54,677 people, and an aid blockade.
CBS News
30-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi released from ICE detention
Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian Columbia student who had been detained by immigration authorities when he went in for his U.S. citizenship interview, has been released after a federal judge's order on Wednesday. Mahdawi was taken into custody on April 16. Mahdawi's attorneys argued that the Trump administration is seeking to deport Mahdawi because he helped lead pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia's campus in the early months of the Israel-Hamas war, in violation of his First Amendment rights. This is a breaking story. It will be updated.
CBS News
30-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Columbia student Moshen Mahdawi released from ICE detention
Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian Columbia student who had been detained by immigration authorities when he went in for his U.S. citizenship interview, has been released after a federal judge's order on Wednesday. Mahdawi was taken into custody on April 16. Mahdawi's attorneys argued that the Trump administration is seeking to deport Mahdawi because he helped lead pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia's campus in the early months of the Israel-Hamas war, in violation of his First Amendment rights. This is a breaking story. It will be updated.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NJ judge denies feds' bid to move Columbia protester Mahmoud Khalil's case to Louisiana
A federal judge in New Jersey on Tuesday denied the government's motion to dismiss Palestinian Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil's habeas corpus case, rejecting an effort to get it moved to Louisiana. In a 67-page decision, Judge Michael Farbiarz found that he had jurisdiction over the matter that the Trump administration has aggressively argued should be heard in Louisiana. Khalil's lawyers maintained that the government wanted the case moved there so that any challenges would be directed toward the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, considered among the country's most conservative. Khalil, a green card holder, was swept up by Homeland Security agents on March 8 after returning home to his Columbia-owned apartment from an Iftar dinner with his wife, who is on the verge of giving birth to their first child. He played a leading role in campus protests last year against Israeli bombing in Gaza and Columbia's investment ties to Israel's government, acting as a mediator between student protesters and university administrators. Agents took him downtown to 26 Federal Plaza and hours later to a private detention facility in Elizabeth, N.J. They put him on a plane heading down south the following day. He has since been held at a detention center in Jena, La., where he has said he is sleeping in cold facilities without a blanket. Instead of accusing Khalil of breaking U.S. laws, the Trump administration has cited an obscure provision in a 1952 law that empowers Secretary of State Marco Rubio to order someone deported if their presence in the country could pose unfavorable consequences for U.S. foreign policy, which the feds claim his advocacy for Palestinians does. Khalil was the first of several students in the U.S. to be targeted at breakneck speed this month. Shortly after his arrest, Khalil's lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition, which challenges the legality of someone's detention, in Manhattan, where the feds had told his wife and lawyers he would be. A federal judge in Manhattan later transferred the case to New Jersey, his location at the time the petition was brought. The government sought to convince the courts that New Jersey never had jurisdiction over the case and that a habeas corpus petition could only be targeted toward officials at a Louisiana detention facility, which Farbiarz rejected — finding the law required the petition filed in New York on March 9 at 4:40 a.m. must be treated as if it had been filed in New Jersey. 'Under habeas law, jurisdiction in a particular district is established when a petitioner is physically present in the district at the same moment a petition is filed there on his behalf,' Farbiarz wrote. 'That confluence happened here.' Representatives for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In a statement, Khalil's wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, said she was relieved by the ruling. 'As the countdown to our son's birth begins and I inch closer and closer to my due date, I will continue to strongly advocate for Mahmoud's freedom and for his safe return home, so he can be by my side to welcome our first child,' Abdalla said. A lawyer for Khalil, Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, echoed Abdalla's comments. 'We are grateful the court wisely understood that the government cannot try to manipulate the jurisdiction of the United States courts in a transparent attempt to shield their unconstitutional – and, frankly, chilling – behavior,' Azmy said. 'We look forward to the next phase of this case, which is to get Mahmoud out of detention and into the arms of his family, and then to prove the Trump administration's attempted deportation of Mahmoud and others is nothing but unconstitutional retaliation for protected speech.' _____
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
N.J. judge denies feds' bid to move Columbia protester Mahmoud Khalil's case to La.
A federal judge in New Jersey on Tuesday denied the government's motion to dismiss Palestinian Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil's habeas corpus case, rejecting an effort to get it moved to Louisiana. In a 67-page decision, Judge Michael Farbiarz found that he had jurisdiction over the matter that the Trump administration has aggressively argued should be heard in Louisiana. Khalil's lawyers maintained that the government wanted the case moved there, so that any challenges would be directed toward the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, considered among the country's most conservative. Khalil, a green card holder, was swept up by Homeland Security agents on March 8 after returning home to his Columbia-owned apartment from an Iftar dinner with his wife, who is on the verge of giving birth to their first child. He played a leading role in campus protests last year against Israeli bombing in Gaza and Columbia's investment ties to Israel's government, acting as a mediator between student protesters and university administrators. Agents took him downtown to 26 Federal Plaza and hours later to a private detention facility in Elizabeth, N.J. They put him on a plane heading down south the following day. He has since been held at a detention center in Jena, La., where he has said he is sleeping in cold facilities without a blanket. Instead of accusing Khalil of breaking U.S. laws, the Trump administration has cited an obscure provision in a 1952 law that empowers Secretary of State Marco Rubio to order someone deported if their presence in the country could pose unfavorable consequences for U.S. foreign policy, which the feds claim his advocacy for Palestinians does. Khalil was the first of several students in the U.S. to be targeted at breakneck speed this month. Shortly after his arrest, Khalil's lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition, which challenges the legality of someone's detention, in Manhattan, where the feds had told his wife and lawyers he would be. A federal judge in Manhattan later transferred the case to New Jersey, his location at the time the petition was brought. The government sought to convince the courts that New Jersey never had jurisdiction over the case and that a habeas corpus petition could only be targeted toward officials at a Louisiana detention facility, which Farbiarz rejected — finding the law required the petition filed in New York on March 9 at 4:40 a.m. must be treated as if it had been filed in New Jersey. 'Under habeas law, jurisdiction in a particular district is established when a petitioner is physically present in the district at the same moment a petition is filed there on his behalf,' Farbiarz wrote. 'That confluence happened here.' Representatives for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In a statement, Khalil's wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, said she was relieved by the ruling. 'As the countdown to our son's birth begins and I inch closer and closer to my due date, I will continue to strongly advocate for Mahmoud's freedom and for his safe return home, so he can be by my side to welcome our first child,' Abdalla said. A lawyer for Khalil, Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, echoed Abdalla's comments. 'We are grateful the court wisely understood that the government cannot try to manipulate the jurisdiction of the United States courts in a transparent attempt to shield their unconstitutional – and, frankly, chilling – behavior,' Azmy said. 'We look forward to the next phase of this case, which is to get Mahmoud out of detention and into the arms of his family, and then to prove the Trump administration's attempted deportation of Mahmoud and others is nothing but unconstitutional retaliation for protected speech.'
