Teen made up story about anti-Muslim attack on subway
By Tina Moore and Shawn Cohen
December 14, 2016 | 5:51pm | Updated December 14, 2016 | 6:51pm
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Yasmin Seweid Photo: Facebook
A Muslim teen who claimed a trio of drunks had taunted her as a “terrorist” on a Manhattan subway train admitted she lied to cops — and was arrested by the NYPD Wednesday, sources said.
Yasmin Seweid, 18, is charged with obstructing governmental administration and filing a false report, according to a high ranking police source.
Both charges are misdemeanors punishable by up to a year in jail.
Seweid, of Nassau County, had claimed the hateful drunks shouted “Trump! Trump!” and called her a “terrorist” as they tried to steal her headscarf.
“Go back to your country!” she said they shouted during the Dec. 1 attack.
But when cops tried to confirm her story by pulling surveillance video, inconsistencies appeared.
Hate crime investigators called the Baruch College business major in on Wednesday to work on another sketch of her so-called “attackers,” and confronted her with the inconsistencies, another source said.
That’s when she cracked, admitting that she had been out late drinking with friends, and made up the attack story to distract her angry father, sources said.
Seweid had been having problems with her Egyptian, strictly Muslim family in North New Hyde Park because she is becoming “westernized,” one source said.
The family problems were aggravated by their learning she was dating a Catholic, the source said.
Seweid’s older brother, Abdoul, was charged with four other teens with grand larceny and conspiracy back in 2012, when he was 17.
Nassau cops busted the five kids for allegedly breaking into parked cars and stealing the electronics and other goods inside.
In a striking parallel to the charges against his sister four years later, Abdoul was additionally charged with falsely reporting an incident.
Cops said he claimed when he was busted that his pal had been “assaulted by three unknown males,” according to a Newsday story at the time.
The disposition of those charges was not immediately available Wednesday night.
Yasmin Seweid’s claims of suffering a bias attack had sparked a week-long NYPD manhunt for the three alleged suspects.
She had also publicly complained that no one on the crowded train came to her aid, prompting much public discourse not only on the rise in hate crimes throughout the city, but on the callousness of commuters.
Seweid became the subject of a manhunt herself last week, when she ran away to her sister’s home in Fishkill, NY, leaving the rest of her family and cops desperate to find her again.
She was tracked down by Nassau cops, who found her because either she or the sister were posting on Facebook, sources said.
Additional reporting by Laura Italiano
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