Yehia Amin flashed a “victory sign” as a Manhattan judge sentenced him to 90 days in jail for an antisemitic assault in Times Square.
Amin, of New York, smiled throughout the Tuesday proceeding before Criminal Court Judge Althea Drysdale, who directly confronted him about his demeanor. “I see you smiling,” the judge told him, according to court observer Glenn Richter. “This is a serious matter. Why are you smiling?” Amin responded through an Arabic interpreter that he wanted to look good for photographs, Richter told JNS.
Richter, 79, founder of the New York Jewish Community Judicial Watch Group, had spent the day waiting for Amin to appear. The defendant arrived late in the afternoon with his mother after failing to show for his morning court date. “Mr. Amin, who should have been there in the morning, saunters in in the afternoon, along with his mommy,” Richter said. Court staff scrambled to locate an Arabic interpreter, pushing the case to the end of the day.
The October 18, 2023 attack originally brought seven charges against Amin. Prosecutors said he stalked a 23-year-old Israeli tourist and four friends, all wearing kippahs, through Times Square for several minutes while shouting threats including “Hamas should kill more of you,” “may Allah kill all the Jews” and “all Jews should die.” When the group tried to escape, Amin ran up behind the Israeli and punched him in the back of the head. Amin pleaded guilty in March to third-degree assault as a hate crime under a plea agreement with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Richter found Amin’s courtroom behavior particularly striking given the circumstances. “What kind of guy grins at this very, very, very tough judge Althea Drysdale as she’s sentencing him to prison time?” he said. He dismissed any interpretation of Amin’s hand gesture as a peace sign. “To me, it’s a V for victory,” Richter stated. “It’s possible that he thought, listen, there were originally seven charges that were going to be thrown against him, and it was plea bargained down to one charge of third-degree assault as a hate crime,” He added: “Maybe to him this was a victory.” The smile “could have been a smirk of satisfaction,” Richter continued. “You know, ‘I only got 90 days.'” Amin had not behaved this way at prior hearings, Richter noted, speculating that the sentencing itself prompted the display.
Serena Smulansky, another member of Richter’s watch group, sharply criticized the plea agreement. “This is an example of the imbalance with Bragg’s office,” she said, referring to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. “This man has appeared 22 times in court with so many excuses. He is completely unrepentant.” Smulansky described a threatening encounter with Amin during an earlier court appearance. “I went to the bathroom and when I returned and had to walk past the defendant, he kind of started toward me and said something like, ‘What are you looking at?'” she recounted. “His mom and his lawyer told him to stop it and he said, ‘But she was looking at me.'” Smulansky said she reported the incident to the assistant district attorney handling the case but received no follow-up.
She contrasted Amin’s treatment with that of Larry Montes, 46, who faces federal custody and up to 15 years on state charges alone for allegedly attacking a congregant and security guard and damaging religious objects during Shabbat services at Central Synagogue. “You have a nutcase like Montes, who committed a similar act of violence but is clearly off his head, and he is being held in federal custody,” Smulansky said. She argued prosecutors “choose certain defendants to make an example out of” while others avoid detention and serious prison time.
Richter agreed the sentence was insufficient, blaming systemic constraints rather than the judge. “It’s a slap in the wrist, because that’s a plea deal,” he said. “There’s a plea deal because of limited resources.”
Brian Chenensky, a fellow court-watch participant, offered a more measured assessment. “I think it’s a miracle that he got sentenced, taking into account the state of the justice system in New York City,” he said. “He’s going to jail for 90 days.” Chenensky concluded: “I think it’s more than a slap on the wrist.”
Amin is expected to begin serving his sentence immediately.