A man behind bars for allegedly beating his wife claims his New Jersey jailers harassed and bullied him because he’s an Orthodox Jew.
Moshe Iskhakov, 29, was “repeatedly ridiculed” and threatened during his three-day stint in the Ocean County Jail, where there were “two swastikas” and a “large target mark” scrawled on a cell wall, according to a notice of claim he filed against the county’s Department of Corrections and Warden Sandra Mueller on April 5.
Under the target were the words, “pop him” and his name, he says.
“I was terrified,” Iskhakov, a former Queens resident who now lives in Jackson, NJ, said.
“They taunted me, they ignored me. They treated me like chopped liver.”
Jackson cops arrested Iskhakov March 9 on an assault warrant, stemming from a Feb. 12 incident in which he allegedly punched and kicked his wife in the belly during an argument at the dinner table over his taking food from her plate, police reported.
The woman told police that when she “tried to get away from the attack,” the 5-foot-6, 230-pound Iskhakov chased her “through the living room and went on to kick her in the stomach into a book shelf,” the report said. Following the arrest, Iskhakov was taken to the jail in Toms River.
For the next three days he claims he was subjected to “severe religious discrimination,” that included guards making fun of his yarmulke and making him remove it multiple times, “inspecting it, and putting it back on his head.”
Officers refused to observe Iskhakov’s kosher diet — denying his request for a second spoon as to not mix milk and dairy — and “thwarted” his “ability to pray” by moving him to multiple rooms, according to the claim, a precursor to a lawsuit.
One guard urged an inmate to “teach that jewboy a lesson” and another spewed, “You Jews own everything. You buy off Lakewood and Toms River and Jackson. Out there you make the rules, but in here we make the rules,” the claim charges.
By the time Iskhakov , a former Realtor, was released on March 11, he told The Post he felt “traumatized.”
“My client was terrorized for the simple fact that he is a Jew,” said Iskhakov’s attorney Ian Goldman. “And worse, he was terrorized by officers of the court.”
The claim seeks unspecified damages.
Warden Sandra Mueller denied the allegations, saying, “The jail has an excellent long-term relationship with the Lakewood Jewish community and we work very closely with them to ensure that Jewish inmates are able to practice their faith when they come to Ocean County Jail.”