King County Prosecutors have filed hate crime charges against a Seattle man for a string of threatening, anti-Semitic incidents.
According to prosecutors, the first incident happened on August 22nd, when 33-year-old Hebah Ibrahim showed up at the Jewish Federation building on 3rd and Virginia.
Charging papers filed in King County Superior Court this afternoon say Ibrahim pressed the Jewish Federation’s call box button and screamed “2000 bodies, you cunts” before he began spitting on the building. This incident, prosecutors note in charging documents, coincided with the Gaza invasion.
Months later, during Rosh Hashannah on October 22, prosecutors say Ibrahim appeared outside of a University District synagogue pulling a small suitcase. Synagogue security contacted Ibrahim and he told them he wanted to speak with the rabbi. Security staff searched Ibrahim and let him in to the building. Instead of speaking to the rabbi, court documents say, Ibrahim walked up to the synagogue’s second-story auditorium and “began looking for items” before he was asked to leave.
On February 2nd, prosecutors say Ibrahim showed up at the Jewish Federation Holocaust Education and Resource Center on 3rd Avenue and the threw a boom box at the building, shattering a window.
Then this last Wednesday, police contacted Ibrahim at a Home Depot store after he told employees he was planning on making a silencer for a shotgun and a zip gun, a homemade firearm. Police searched Ibrahim and found blueprints for a zip gun, a flashlight—often used in the construction of a zip gun—fifty .22 caliber bullets and a knife. During his arrest, court records say, Ibrahim pointed to one officer and asked "who is the Jew?" and told police that "Jews are nigger lovers. I never did anything to them, and what about the Jewish Federation nigger lovers?”
While he was being transported to the precinct, Ibrahim told officers that he'd tried to buy a firearm but was unable to due to past domestic violence incidents and restraining orders. He stated that if he were released from custody, he “it would happen very fast.”
It appears prosecutors believe Ibrahim was threatening violence against the Jewish Federation. In 2006, a shooting at the Jewish Federation building killed one woman and injured six others.
Ibrahim’s bail is set at $500,000.
...was unable to due to past domestic violence incidents and restraining orders.
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