The Superior Court has slapped a 120-day prison term on a man who hacked and injured another with a machete during a fight that was triggered by a joke about religion at an apartment in Chinatown.<\/p>\n
Associate Judge David A. Wiseman sentenced Ashik Uzzman Khan to one year in prison, all suspended except for 120 days, for assault with a dangerous weapon.<\/p>\n
Following a plea agreement, Wiseman gave Khan credit for the time he had already served in jail.<\/p>\n
The judge placed the defendant on two years of probation and ordered him to pay a $100 fine plus probation and court costs.<\/p>\n
Wiseman required the defendant to write a letter of apology to the victim, Asfat Ali. He was also ordered to pay any emergency room expenses due to the offense.<\/p>\n
Khan was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, and assault and battery. He signed a plea agreement and pleaded guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon.<\/p>\n
The incident occurred on Jan. 25, 2008, when Khan punched Ali, triggering during a party. Khan, a Muslim, joked about the religion of one of the guests, Sukesh Chandra Barman, who is Hindu. Khan, in a loud voice, also threatened to throw Barman from the second floor.<\/p>\n
This prompted Barman to leave the party. Several other guests also left because they were afraid that something bad would happen.<\/p>\n
Ali told Khan that because of what he did to Barman, their friends and visitors were forced to leave.<\/p>\n
The defendant stood up, uttered a profanity and allegedly pushed and kicked Ali.<\/p>\n
Khan then ran downstairs where he and Ali had a fight. As some friends tried to stop them, Khan ran to his car where he took a machete. <\/p>\n
Khan allegedly swung the machete at Ali, but the latter managed to grab and hold the blade.<\/p>\n
The suspect grabbed back the machete. Three friends got the machete and stopped Khan. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Superior Court has slapped a 120-day prison term on a man who hacked and injured another with a machete during a fight that was triggered by a joke about religion at an apartment in Chinatown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}