St. Louis: Hassan is 15 and Has a License to Commit Crimes
Any attempt to stop him would be ableist, racist, and “Islamophobic.”
By Robert Spencer
Hassan is a Muslim migrant from Somalia. He lives in St. Louis. He is fifteen years old and six feet tall. He has broken into his neighbor’s home three times. He has attacked that neighbor and stabbed her in the head with a screwdriver. He has broken into another neighbor’s house as well. But even after all that, he walked free. You see, Hassan reportedly has an IQ of 49, which means he is incompetent to stand trial, which in St. Louis (and no doubt elsewhere) means that he can walk around loose and victimize whomever he wants. On top of that, he is a Somali Muslim migrant. To be tougher on him would be “Islamophobic.”
The neighbor he attacked, Alicia Clarke, says she is now “not feeling safe” and, because Hassan was set free, feels as if she has been “failed by the system.” What Alicia Clarke does not apparently realize is that failing her and people like her, and protecting and coddling people like Hassan, is what the system is all about today. The current system is the handiwork of Leftist practitioners of identity politics who, quite simply, value Hassan more than they do Alicia Clarke, because he is black and she is white, and because he is a Muslim and she is not, and because he is a migrant and she is an American. The architects and guardians of the current system don’t care that after Alicia Clarke was savagely beaten and stabbed by Hassan, he walked free. It’s simply the price of the diversity that is our strength, and that we all must celebrate.
According to St. Louis’ KSDK, Clarke’s encounter with the diversity that is our strength, and the refugees who are welcome because it would be xenophobic and racist to refuse them, was perhaps not as magnificent as such encounters are supposed to be, and so KSDK helpfully did not bother to inform its readers that Hassan was a Muslim migrant at all. Wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea, after all.
In KSDK’s account, Clarke found that her phone had been stolen and traced it, using Find My iPhone, to the backyard of her neighbor. The culprit, according to KSDK, had no distinguishing features whatsoever other than being a “6-foot teen.” Probably a white supremacist, right?
He certainly behaved like the establishment media’s picture of the most ardent Trump supporter. Clarke recalled: “He knocked me down, pulling my hair, kicking.” When he finally stopped, Clarke called the police. But then her tormenter came back: “I am on the phone with St. Louis police dispatch,” she said, “making my way to my backdoor, when he comes back with a weapon. He is on top of me. There was blood everywhere. I was literally fighting for my life at that point.”
Hassan had come back with a screwdriver, and stabbed Clarke in the head and face with it. Alicia Clarke’s sister, Andrea Clarke Flatley, wrote on Facebook that the attacker gave his sister a broken nose, and that Alicia Clarke now also has “staples in her head and stitches to the puncture wound under her eye” as a result of the attack. Flatley noted the attacker’s first name of Hassan, and said that he was “a 15 year old refugee from Somalia who lives with his family. He is 6’ and approx 175lbs, much larger than my sister.”
The young diversity counselor was eventually arrested, but surely he had been through enough in war-torn Somalia, right? A juvenile court quickly dismissed the case against Hassan. “The most hurtful thing of all of this, is the dropped charges,” said Clarke. “That was much more hurtful than the physical assault.”
KSDK noted that “a juvenile court official said a staff attorney dropped the case before even going to the judge. The courts weren’t able to comment specifically on this incident, since it involves a juvenile. Clarke said she was told her accused attacker was found incompetent to aid in his own defense because he has an IQ of 49.”
Flatley stated that Hassan “has broken into Alicia’s car 3 different times and broken into another neighbor’s house. The police were involved every single time and reported that nothing could be done since he was a minor. Surely this time would be different, though.”
No such luck. Hassan’s IQ of 49 allowed him to skate, and it no doubt helped that he was a Muslim migrant as well. The prosecutor in charge of the case, Sakina Ahmad, formally dismissed the charges. Said Flatley: “We never entered a courtroom, saw a judge, nothing. Hassan was able to go home with a family member. He likely left the building as a free person before we even learned all the above information. The prosecutor sympathized with our frustration and explained that because he is a mentally handicapped, juvenile refugee, every safeguard available is to his benefit and to Alicia’s detriment. She went on to tell us, VERBATIM, that even if Alicia had been KILLED, the outcome would be the same and that this case would be dismissed.”
It didn’t take long, however, for Hassan to suggest that the system’s faith in him was misplaced. Said Flatley: “It only took the kid 4 days to violate the restraining order,” and “SLMPD and SWAT stormed his house and took him back into custody.”
That’s good, but it doesn’t address the larger problem. The system that failed Alicia Clarke doesn’t just protect people like Hassan; it produces them, by again and again allowing them to break the law and suffer no consequences whatsoever. Whether or not Hassan really has an IQ of 49, he should never have been walking around free after his first few offenses. But Muslim migrants are a protected class in America today. The establishment media avoids reporting on anything that might reflect poorly upon them. Law enforcement authorities are afraid to take any action that might be construed as “Islamophobic.”
And so there was no justice for Alicia Clarke. She ran into a young man who has a license to commit crimes. And there are many others like him.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 19 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process.