A former Obama administration official guaranteed the $250,000 bail for a woman who allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at a New York City Police Department car.
Urooj Rahman, 31, a lawyer and Fordham University alumnus, was arrested and charged with attempting to damage or destroy law enforcement vehicles over the weekend during protests over George Floyd’s death.
Salmah Rizvi, who served in the Defense Department and State Department during the Obama administration, pledged to pay the $250,000 in bail, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
“Urooj Rahman is my best friend, and I am an associate at the law firm Ropes & Gray in Washington, D.C. … I earn $255,000 a year,” Rizvi said.
Rizvi’s biography on the Islamic Scholarship Fund states her “high-value work would often inform the president’s daily briefs.”
Rahman was arrested Saturday in Brooklyn along with Colinford Mattis, 32, a Princeton graduate and member of a New York community board.
Mattis was allegedly driving a van with Rahman early Saturday when she threw the Molotov cocktail at an empty NYPD car.
The gasoline-filled bottle failed to ignite, and the two fled, according to the New York Daily News. Surveillance video also caught the scene.
The two were arrested soon after, and police reportedly found materials in the van to make an explosive.
“Molotov Cocktails are violent tools of individuals looking to inflict harm and damage our city. Crimes like these are devastating to their targets and also to the protestors and their right to free speech that police are working hard to protect,” NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said in a Department of Justice press release after the arrests. “I’m confident that the severest penalties under the law will be sought.”
U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue also expressed outrage at anyone throwing an explosive at police property.
“No rational human being can ever believe that hurling firebombs at Police Officers and vehicles is justified. The Eastern District of New York will do everything in its power to protect those who protect us all, and we will ensure that criminals who use the camouflage of lawful protest to launch violent attacks against Police Officers face justice,” he said.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that government officials disagree with releasing Rahman.
“We don’t believe this is the time to be releasing a bomb-thrower like the defendant into the community,” argued federal prosecutor Ian Richardson.
Mattis and Rahman both face minimum sentences of five years in prison and maximum sentences of 20 years if convicted.
