Attacker grabs Saudi student’s hijab and tries to choke her with it, Oregon DA says
An Oregon woman faces bias crime charges after prosecutors accused her of brutally attacking an exchange student from Saudi Arabia by grabbing her hijab and trying to choke her with it.
The 24-year-old exchange student, who was attending Portland State University, was at a TriMet MAX station in the northern Oregon city on Nov. 12 around 7:30 p.m. when a stranger came up to her from behind and grabbed the Muslim head covering she was wearing, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release on Friday.
The accused attacker, Jasmine Renee Campbell, 23, then tried choking the exchange student with the hijab, according to prosecutors.
“The victim was able to push Campbell away, which is when Campbell then forcibly took the hijab from the victim,” prosecutors said in the news release, adding that “court documents allege that Campbell used the hijab and rubbed it on and across multiple exposed sexually intimate parts of her body.”
Prosecutors announced an indictment against Campbell on Friday, charging her with two counts of bias crime, one count of attempted strangulation, one count of harassment and one count of criminal mischief for what authorities described as “forcibly taking the victim’s hijab from her and then intentionally desecrating the hijab.”
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An affidavit said the attacker stripped off all of her clothing except a leather jacket, and then “placed the hijab between her legs [and] rubbed it against her naked vagina,” the Portland Mercury reported.
According to the affidavit, the attacker said “she was fighting and playing around, that she wanted to be a stripper, and she wanted to show the victim that she did not have to be a Muslim, that people don’t have to be black or white, and that she wanted the victim to know that religion doesn’t define her,” KPTV reported.
The Saudi student told police after the attack “that she no longer feels safe wearing a hijab in public and is relying on alternative methods to cover herself,” prosecutors said.
“This is a really rough time for Muslim women,” said Zakir Khan, Oregon board chairperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, according to the Oregonian. “We’re seeing other attacks against Muslim women who wear the hijab. They should be freely able to exercise their religion, just like anyone else.”
Campbell was arrested Dec. 13 on unrelated charges, authorities said.
Campbell failed to appear in court Friday for a 9 a.m. hearing, according to prosecutors, who added that “the warrant in this case remains active.”
The Oregonian reported that “court papers in recent months list Campbell as both homeless or living at an address in outer Southeast Portland.”
