Professional-Hamas vandal sentenced to jail for defacing DC monument

WASHINGTON — A person who wrote “Hamas is Comin” on a DC monument final 12 months has been sentenced to 10 days in federal jail.

Zaid Mohammed Mahdawi, 26, the president of the Richmond, Va., chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, may even should pay $1,500 in restitution and serve 80 hours of group service following his launch, US District Choose James Boasberg dominated Friday.

Mahdawi pleaded responsible to destruction of presidency property, a misdemeanor, for his actions throughout July protests towards visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Prosecutors mentioned video confirmed Mahdawi reducing the US flag from its pole in entrance of the Union Station prepare hub — with that flag then stolen by a fellow protester — earlier than he climbed atop a monument to explorer Christopher Columbus and spray-painting it with the pro-terrorist group message.

The jail sentence comes because the Trump administration takes motion to deport college students residing within the US on visas who partook in anti-Israel activism in the course of the Jewish state’s warfare with Hamas, which was triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023, bloodbath of about 1,200 folks in southern Israel.

President Trump beforehand urged a heavy hand towards monument vandals in DC — after Black Lives Matter activists lassoed and tried to tug down a historic statue of President Andrew Jackson dealing with the White Home in 2020.

“I introduced that anyone that touches any of our monuments or statues goes to jail for 10 years… I watched their asses from the again. That’s all I may see, is 1000’s of asses. And that stopped,” Trump mentioned final August following the anti-Israel graffiti by Mahdawi.

“The opposite day you see them beginning to do it once more. They’re taking the spray paint, and so they’re spraying these attractive limestone tigers… You recognize, while you spray limestone, you’ll see it in 100 years from now as a result of it’s a really porous stone.”

Boasberg can also be the choose who not too long ago ordered the Trump administration to stop deportation flights of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador — for which President Trump has demanded his impeachment.