Two Columbia University janitors who claimed to have been held hostage during campus protests last year, are suing their alleged captors for battery, assault, and conspiracy to violate their civil rights, the Free Press reported on Saturday.
The lawsuit, filed by Torridon Law and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law on behalf of Mario Torres and Lester Wilson, alleged that over 40 Columbia students and “outside agitators” “terrorized” both men “into the early morning of April 30th, assaulted and battered them, held them against their will, and derided them as ‘Jew-lovers’ and ‘Zionists.’ ”
Both men noted that the break-in felt “highly coordinated,” with the two observing people with “cases of water and food,” “rolled-up mattresses,” and “tape and rope,” according to the lawsuit.
Shortly after the event, Wilson told the Free Press he thought he “could have been killed in there.”
The occupation of Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall occurred almost exactly a year ago, and, according to the lawsuit, both men have struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder that required medical care.
Neither one has returned to work; both instead “subsisting on interim Workers’ Compensation payments,” which have not been able to pay for basic needs and medical bills, according to the suit.
“Mario and Lester are decent, honest, hardworking men who have been through hell. None of this ever should have happened,” Tara Helfman, one of the lawyers on the case, said.
The lawsuit described the protesters as “reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan,” claiming they were “part of a broad pro-Hamas, antisemitic network of organizations, groups, and cells that are connected through a largely untraceable underground communications system. They promote and resort to violent and illegal tactics, and are motivated by invidious discrimination against Jews and supporters of Jews.”
A similar lawsuit was filed against pro-Palestine groups in California
An additional lawsuit was filed on Friday by the Brandeis Center on behalf of two students, a professor, and a rabbi at the University of California, alleging that several pro-Palestine groups engaged in “a coordinated campaign of egregious acts of racial exclusion, intimidation, and assault” to “intimidate Jewish students, faculty, and staff.”
“Too often, the mainstream media creates a false narrative about innocent political protesters who are simply trying to advance a peace agenda, and who are getting punished, when in fact, what we’re seeing is organized activity by groups who support the terrorist agenda of Hamas and who are engaged in outright violence,” Ken Marcus founder of the Brandeis Center, said.
“These cases demonstrate that the campaign against campus antisemitism isn’t about speech and free expression, but rather an effort to curtail the extreme violence that is unleashed at some of our most prestigious institutions when administrators look the other way.”
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