A Cornell University junior accused of posting violently threatening statements against Jewish people on campus was held without bail after his first appearance in federal court Wednesday.
Patrick Dai, from the Rochester, New York suburb of Pittsford, is charged with posting threats to kill or injure another using interstate communications. The graphic, anonymous messages posted this weekend on a Greek life forum rattled Jewish students on the Ithaca campus in upstate New York.
“While we take some measure of relief in knowing that the alleged author of the vile antisemitic posts that threatened our Jewish community is in custody, it was disturbing to learn that he was a Cornell student,” Cornell President Martha E. Pollack said in a message Wednesday to the university community.
Pollack said the Ivy League university will not tolerate antisemitism, racism, Islamophobia or any other form of hatred.
Investigators traced the threatening messages to Dai through an IP address, a numeric designation that identifies its location on the internet. Dai admitted that he posted the threatening messages in an interview with law enforcement authorities at the Cornell Police Department, according to the federal complaint made late Tuesday.
Dai, 21, waived his right to a bail hearing during his initial court appearance in Syracuse. He also was assigned a federal public defender, Gabrielle DiBella. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Nov. 15, according to federal officials.
Dai’s mother attended the court appearance and did not comment afterward, according to media reports.
The Associated Press left a phone message seeking comment from DiBella.
The threatening comments were left on a website about fraternities and sororities that is not affiliated with Cornell and prompted police to increase security for Jewish students.
One post included threats to stab and slit the throats of Jewish males and to bring a rifle to campus and shoot Jews. Another post was titled “gonna shoot up 104 west,” a university dining hall that caters to kosher diets and is located next to the Cornell Jewish Center, according to the complaint.
Dai has been suspended from Cornell, a spokesperson said.
Cornell also announced that Friday will be a “community day.” No classes will be held, and faculty and nonessential staff will be excused from work.
(AP)
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2 Responses
The question is how did a Chinese engineering student, who showed no sign of antisemitism before he went off to college, get radicalized like this? And the answer may like in one of his messages, that he posted on Oct-28 at 8:16:07 PM:
“as long as the target is sub human like a zionist jew-woman then räpe is allowed and encouraged by the quran. Mashallah”
That may mean nothing, but it may also mean that he has become a Moslem, which would explain his behavior completely.
Such irony that this guy’s Chinese because they clearly know a thing or two about dealing with violent disruptive muslims:
In May 2014, the Chinese government launched the “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism” (严厉打击暴力恐怖活动专项行动) in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang or XUAR) against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims.
“Break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins. Completely shovel up the roots of ‘two-faced people,’ dig them out, and vow to fight these two-faced people until the end.”
—Maisumujiang Maimuer, Chinese religious affairs official, August 10, 2017, on a Xinhua Weibo page
Chinese commit ethnic cleansing and genocide on millions of muslims and there’s crickets chirping in the UN.
Israel should hire China to get rid of our infestation problem too. Seems they know how to do more than just make a mean stir fry and manufacture everything on Amazon.