Woman hits Senate Armed Services chairman with pie

8/16/2010 05:10:07 PM

BIG RAPIDS, Mich. – A woman identified as an anti-war protester hit U.S. Sen. Carl Levin in the face with an apple pie during the Armed Services Committee chairman's meeting with constituents in northern Michigan, authorities said Monday.

The senator took a question near the end of the Monday morning meeting in Big Rapids from a man who said he was a student, Levin's office said in a news release. The man read a long statement, then a woman came up and hit Levin with a pie.

Big Rapids police arrested Ahlam M. Mohsen, 22, of Coldwater, on assault and disorderly conduct charges. She has no listed telephone number.

Mohsen told the Big Rapids Pioneer she hoped "to send a message that liberals and Democrats are just as implicated in the violence as the Republicans."

Mohsen was one of three protesters arrested in January 2009 after a sit-in at Levin's office in Lansing, according to Michigan State University's campus newspaper. She told the newspaper then that the group wanted the United States to begin cutting military and other support to Israel and call for an investigation of Israeli war crimes.

Big Rapids police said Monday that the man who read the statement before Mohsen hit Levin with the pie and a woman who videotaped the attack also could face charges.

Levin appeared to take the pie toss in stride.

"They didn't hurt me, but they hurt their cause even more than their own extreme words had already done," he said in a statement Monday afternoon.

The constituent meeting was sponsored by the Meekest County Democratic Party. The city of about 10,000 is 50 miles north of Grand Rapids and 150 miles northwest of Detroit.