A man has been arrested and charged following an attack on a Lebanese restaurant located in Newtown in Sydney’s inner west.
A 23 year old man from Kogarah in Sydney’s south was arrested after allegedly smashing a ceramic basin at the back of the restaurant at 1am on Wednesday. Police say that the man was carrying the drug ice at the time.
The incident follows a series of attacks that have targeted the restaurant over the past two weeks. Owner of the venue, Mohamed Zouhour told SMH that the restaurant received an anonymous phone call last week that was racially motivated.
“They called me a ‘bloody Lebanese’, they told me: ‘Move out of the area, you can’t be in Newtown, get out,” Zouhour told SMH.
A week after the phone call on Saturday 19 September, Zouhour said that he arrived at the restaurant to find the words ‘F— Arabs” etched into one of the restaurant’s front windows. Then on Tuesday this week, the windows that line the restaurant’s 12 metre frontage were smashed.
Police say that they are still investigating Tuesday’s attack and are unsure at this stage if it is related to the most recent attack on Wednesday morning.