A Republican New York City Council member was charged with illegal possession of a weapon on Friday after she appeared a day earlier with a gun in her waistband at a pro-Palestinian rally she condemned, New York City police confirmed to AFP. -York.

39-year-old Inna Vernikova of Ukrainian origin has repeatedly complained about the pro-Palestinian demonstrations organized in New York after last Saturday’s deadly attacks in Israel by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

She herself posted on X (formerly Twitter) a video of herself appearing at this pro-Palestinian student demonstration on the outskirts of Brooklyn University.

In it, he denounces the “support of Hamas” and the desire to “import here in New York the terror that the Israeli people are currently suffering.”

But other videos and photos on social media showed her “with the tip of a firearm sticking out of her pants,” a New York Police Department (NYPD) spokesman told AFP.

The New York Police Department said “no one was threatened or injured” in the shooting, but she was still called to the police station, where she went with her lawyer overnight.

New York state law permits handguns, but their possession in public is restricted.

She was charged with “unlawful possession of a firearm,” police said, and had to surrender her black Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun and her gun permit.

According to New York City Council Republican Leader Joe Borelli, quoted by the New York Times, she received a summons to appear in court.

Authorities stepped up security in New York on Friday as another pro-Palestinian demonstration is planned for Times Square in midtown Manhattan.