US prosecutors have sought a four-year jail term for hate crime for a man accused of viciously beating a Sikh cab driver while shouting anti-Muslim slurs in Washington state last year.
Jamie W. Larson, a resident of Federal Way city in the northwestern state, is accused of attacking a Sikh cab driver, who was driving the 50-year-old home after a drunken afternoon in Auburn on Oct 17, 2012, according to local Seattle Post Intelligencer.
Larson, a 27-time convict and unreformed drunk who apparently believed the Sikh driver to be Muslim, tore out chunks of his beard and caused internal injuries which saw the driver hospitalised for eight days and miss two months of work, prosecutors said.
During the attack, Larson complaining that immigrants are "taking all of our jobs" shouted hateful comments about Arabs, Persians and, more generally, Muslims, the news site said.
Larson is scheduled to be sentenced later Tuesday by US District Judge John Coughenour at the federal courthouse in Seattle.
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Asking that Larson be sentenced to more than four years in federal prison, Assistant US Attorney Bruce Miyake noted that the man Larson beat so savagely is still trying to cope with his injuries.
Initially charged in state court, Larson was ultimately prosecuted federally under the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act law that criminalises attacks based on a person's actual or perceived race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.
In a memo to the court, Miyake noted that doubly misguided hate attacks against Sikhs are a regular occurrence.
"Intended or not, this attack conveyed a message that those of Middle Eastern descent and Sikhs do not belong in America and are unsafe here," Miyake said in court papers.
"These types of attacks have become commonplace since Sep 11, 2001, when misdirected individuals or groups focus hate and violence on Sikhs and Muslims, believing these individuals to be associated with terrorism."
