The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office is investigating an assault on an Israeli business school student and Harvard University refused to cooperate with the investigation into students, according to a report from the Washington Free Beacon.
Harvard’s refusal to cooperate with authorities over an incident that was recorded in October 2023 has delayed the ongoing criminal case against the two students. The duo can be seen in video footage accosting their Jewish peer.
Harvard students Elom Tettey-Tamaklo and Ibrahim Bharmal were charged in connection with the assault in May. Court records show that the duo was scheduled to be arraigned in June, but the hearings were postponed until September. Prosecutors were forced to postpone the arraignment a second time, moving the date back until October.
Prosecutors claim that Harvard’s refusal to cooperate is stalling the investigation. Assistant District Attorney Ursula Knight reprimanded the university in a hearing.
“Harvard police essentially refused to investigate,” Knight said. She went on to claim that the school’s behavior “has been a shock to the Commonwealth.”
The attorney for the Israeli student who was reportedly attacked, Douglas Brooks, said he was “shocked to learn today that Harvard has refused to cooperate with the District Attorney’s Office’s investigation.”
“Harvard has ignored our requests for nearly a year to investigate the incident at the administrative level, but we never thought it would go so far as to impede the District Attorney’s Office’s investigation,” Brooks said.
Prosecutors dubbed Harvard’s refusal to cooperate “unprecedented.” Legal partner Jim Trusty told the Free Beacon that he’d never seen this before.
“What I think would be really fascinating here are the communications between the administration and the Harvard police,” Trusty said. “Because it smells like political interference, and if that’s true — if they’re making a conscious decision to essentially protect anti-Semitism — number one, they’re not alone in the college scene, number two, it needs to be called out.”
