


A pro-Palestinian activist who has clashed with police officers at demonstrations has been arrested and charged with arson after federal authorities said he sneaked onto a Brooklyn parking lot last month and set fire to 10 police vehicles.
The man, Jakhi McCray, 21, was arrested Monday morning and appeared before Magistrate Judge Vera M. Scanlon in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. He pleaded not guilty and was released on bail worth $300,000.
After he was granted bail, Mr. McCray was brought by police officers to Manhattan Criminal Court to be arraigned on state charges related to a protest he had attended, according to Ron Kuby, a lawyer for Mr. McCray. The details of that arrest were unclear to Mr. McCray’s lawyers late Monday. Mr. Kuby said he expected his client to spend a night in police custody before returning to his family’s home in Maplewood, N.J.
“It sounds like the police are just really angry at him for messing up their cars,” Mr. Kuby said.
Mr. McCray, who is also a staunch critic of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, was backed by his mother and more than two dozen supporters in the courtroom, most of whom donned kaffiyehs, a symbol of Palestinian resistance. Several dozen more gathered in an overflow room.
In a two-page statement released before his appearance, Mr. McCray railed against “the brutality of state repression” and the “kidnapping of migrants.” He claimed that police officers and media outlets had lied about him, and cited other people who had been arrested in connection with their presence at pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
In a news release, Joseph Nocella Jr., the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said: “Setting police vehicles ablaze is not a form of protest. It is a federal crime.”