The Manhattan district attorney’s office Thursday dropped charges against one of two brothers who were beaten and choked inside the Egyptian mission to the United Nations after going to the building to demand that the nation enable aid for Gaza.
The brothers, Yasin El Sammak, 22, and Ali Elsamak, 15, were arrested by New York police officers on Aug. 20 and charged with assault after the altercation at the East 44th Street building.
But accounts and videos from the brothers, who spell their surname differently, and their supporters, painted a different picture.
Video showed the brothers being dragged into the diplomatic outpost on East 44th by four security guards. Then, Mr. El Sammak is whipped with a chain by one guard, taken to the ground and strangled with his kaffiyeh, according to Akram Elsamak, the father of both men. Ali was also put in a chokehold, the father said.
On Thursday, a spokesman for Manhattan prosecutors said the charges against Yasin El Sammak, who had been charged with assault, were dismissed. The status of the case against Ali, which is taking place in family court because he is a minor, was unclear.
The police had offered a different account of what transpired. They said the brothers had tried to chain the doors of the mission shut, precipitating the events that then unfolded, and that officers had arrested them based on accounts given by the security guards. A representative for the Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Husam Kaid, a fellow activist who filmed the encounter, previously told The New York Times that he had been the one to try to chain the doors, and had asked Mr. El Sammak to record the demonstration.
A security guard then approached Mr. El Sammak and began yelling, according to Mr. Kaid. Another guard grabbed Ali and pinned him against a doorway, according to Mr. Kaid and the brothers’ father.
After Mr. El Sammak tried to get the guards to release his brother, the guards pulled them toward the mission, according to their father and snippets of video. Then the brothers were beaten.
When Mr. El Sammak was arraigned last month, the most serious charge against him was downgraded to a misdemeanor from a felony. On Thursday, neither his father nor the lawyers commented on the status of the case of Ali, which is being handled in a family court.
In a statement, a lawyer for the brothers, Jacqueline Dombroff, said they were “the victims of violence outside the Egyptian mission, not the perpetrators.” For Mr. El Sammak, Ms. Dombroff said, the outcome “cannot erase the trauma of being assaulted.”
“Today’s dismissal makes clear what we have said from the start: Yasin El Sammak did nothing wrong,” Ms. Dombroff said.
The incident sparked an outcry on social media. Critics described the encounter as a crackdown on dissent by a foreign entity on U.S. soil, while continuing to condemn Egypt’s role in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Critics had been demanding that Egypt do more to open the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, a critical access point for humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Gaza side of the crossing has been closed since May 2024, when Israel invaded Rafah.
Hurubie Meko contributed reporting.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
Maia Coleman is a reporter for The Times covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York area.
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