An 18-year-old Muslim college student in New York – who was arrested for making up an elaborate story about being attacked by Trump supporters – showed up in court Wednesday with a shaved head.
The purported reason for her new razor cut?
Her Egyptian parents shaved her head because she dated a Christian man, went drinking with friends and brought shame to the family, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.
The strange saga has been unfolding with new and bizarre twists almost every day.
As WND reported, Yasmin Seweid, a New York Muslim girl, claimed three men screamed “Donald Trump!” while attacking her. She said they called her a terrorist and tried to rip off her hijab on a Manhattan subway platform on Dec. 1.
“Seweid had numerous opportunities to admit the incident never happened but again and again stood by her story, [a police] source said,” the New York Daily News reported. “On Wednesday, after again being confronted with questions from detectives increasingly suspicious of her story she recanted and said she made it all up, citing family problems.”
In her Tuesday column at WND, Pamela Geller had raised serious doubts about Seweid’s story.
“There is no video, no audio, no proof. Just her claims. Proof? Who needs proof? Muslims know that their claims of ‘Islamophobia’ run without challenge or investigation,” Geller wrote. “It was, of course, front-page news in America and across the world. Dead victims of jihad terror don’t get this kind of press.”
Geller noted that police hadn’t been able to locate the three alleged attackers. Seweid claimed she wasn’t able to call her family for help because her phone was dying.
“No one on the train helped her?” Geller asked. And then she didn’t immediately tell law enforcement or anyone on the platform at Penn Station? This is impossible to believe. Penn Station is teeming with cops. … No one on the subway car filmed it? Even more impossible to believe in this day and age. And she couldn’t identify anyone on the surveillance video. …
“Call me skeptical, but this whole thing stinks, like Fulton’s fish market. … Yasmin Seweid’s story has more holes than Swiss cheese.”
Last week, Seweid was reported missing. Then, with no explanation, she resurfaced Friday.
When the police learned she had been lying about the alleged attack, she was arrested and charged with making a false report and obstructing governmental administration.
When she showed up in court, she had a shaved head and eyebrows. The New York Daily News reports the cut was ordered by her family as punishment.
“Her strict Muslim parents allegedly forced Seweid to shave her head over the incident and were upset that she was dating a Christian, sources said,” the Daily News reported. “… Seiweid admitted that she lied to throww off her parents, who are Egyptian immigrants, because they disapproved of her boyfriend, a source said.”
The paper said Seweid’s father, Syeed, 55, claimed he didn’t know why she fabricated the story about an attack.
“I have no idea,” he said. “She’s the one that can speak for herself.”
In yet another strange twist, Seweid’s brother, Abdoul, was reportedly charged with making a false report in 2012. At the time, Abdoul was 17 and claimed his friend was “assaulted by three unknown males.” The Daily News reports that he and four other teenagers were charged with grand larceny and conspiracy. They were accused of breaking into cars and stealing valuables.
Red State’s Mickey White posted the following tweet revealing an image of Seweid’s brother allegedly dragging her from court with a jacket over her head.
“This photo and the body language expressed are familiar and make me afraid for this girl, and could explain her irrational act,” White wrote.
“I’m genuinely concerned for Ms. Seweid’s safety as the shaving of the head is standard practice amongst Muslims who adhere to honor punishment. … [W]e should keep an eye on Yasmin and her family as this progresses.”
Meanwhile, Seweid’s sister, Sara, is blaming the media and New York City police for investigating Yasmin’s claims.
In a Facebook post, she said she was concerned about the “mental state of young Muslim women who feel that they have to lie so intensively to survive.”
She also wrote, “The NYPD should have never been involved in the first place even if the incident did happen. It became super clear to me these past two week [sic] that the police’s first instinct is to doubt your story and try to disprove it.”
Sara Seweid also blasted the police: “The NYPD doesn’t care about us or our safety. Never did.”
Then she went on to attack the media: “Things snowballed out of our control because of the media because by the next morning the news had started publishing stories. Reporters made things so much worse for my family.”
As WND reported, Seweid’s story is just the latest in a series of false or questionable reports from individuals who claim to have been attacked by Trump supporters.
On Tuesday came news that a Florida man faked a pro-Trump KKK hate crime, set his ex-girlfriend’s car on fire and even staged his own kidnapping, leaving a bloody ransom note filled with racial slurs, the U.K. Daily Mail reported.
As WND’s Leo Hohmann reported in November, reports of a spike in “attacks” on Muslims and other minorities since the election of Trump have appeared in countless media outlets, with most of them based on a Southern Poverty Law Center list of 701 incidents of “hate crimes.”
The trend was so concerning to New York Gov. Andrew Coumo that he ordered the creation of a special task force to look into the “explosion of hate crimes.”
Most of the incidents on the SPLC list, while deplorable, crude and vile if they actually happened, have not included physical violence and hence the use of the term “attack” is misleading. Most involve uncorroborated assertions of verbal threats or racist comments that, while mean and nasty, don’t appear to pass the smell test required of a crime.
AÂ female Muslim student at University of Louisiana who accused a Trump-supporting man of attacking her and ripping off her hijab admitted a week later she made the story up, the Washington Post reported.
In another case, Bowling Green State University student Eleesha Long claimed to be attacked on the school’s Ohio campus by three white men wearing Trump T-shirts just one day after the election, Media Research Center reported. And the only problem with her story is that none of it ever happened.
In Atlanta, a Muslim teacher reported coming into school the day after Trump was announced the winner of the presidential election and finding a note on her desk that told her to “go hang yourself.” The validity of the note has been questioned and the school investigation has turned up no suspects, something a simple handwriting analysis would seem to accomplish.
In Malden, Massachusetts, a 20-year-old black man told police he was harassed by two white men who used racial slurs, referred to lynching, and warned him, “It’s Trump country now.”
That man later admitted he made up the story, the Boston Herald reported. He told police he wanted to “raise awareness about things that are going on around the country,” said Malden police Chief Kevin Molis.
Read more details in WND’s investigation of alleged “hate crimes” since Trump’s election.
