Even several days ago, Richard Benkin was displaying dozens of his photographs with Hindus in India as well as Baluch individuals and activists. But now, all of those photographs have been deleted by Benkin.
On January 7, 2022, a report was published in BLiTZ exposing on a segment of wrongdoings of Richard Benkin, a controversial human rights activist with the past track records of numerous crimes, including scandal related to a Chicago nursing home.
On December 22, 2022, Chris Blackburn, a political analyst in the United Kingdom in a tweet wrote:
The priority is the safety of vulnerable people. I don’t really care about @AudreyTruschke motives. Richard Benkin defrauded and abused the weakest in American society. Drug addicts and the elderly. Why would anyone in their right mind think he cares for Afghans or Hindus?
Dr. Richard Benkin ran the Lexington Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Lexington, Illinois. In January 2000, Michael Berens of The Chicago Tribune said that, “Benkin, the 48-year-old administrator of the facility as well as a part owner, was accused of luring a 27-year-old woman to the rural facility, improperly admitting her into the home, then arranging for a sexual encounter, according to records released Wednesday by the state Department of Professional Regulation”.
According to the Chicago Tribune report:
“A nursing home administrator [Richard Benkin] who took homeless people to a troubled central Illinois geriatric facility had been barred by regulators from working in long-term care centers after he physically abused a patient at another home, state records show.
“Meanwhile, the Chicago social service agency that sent most of the homeless to the home said Thursday it had been duped into thinking the facility was a treatment center for recovering substance abusers and AIDS patients.
“But state health officials and local police concluded that no such treatment was available at the Lexington Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Lexington, a town of 2,000 north of Bloomington.
“The state Public Health Department closed the 52-bed facility Monday after determining that poor staffing and a series of violent incidents had created a dangerous environment for its 26 residents, including 20 older patients relocated to other homes. The other six, ranging in age from 21 to 46, returned to Chicago”.
Back in 2005, Richard Benkin declared himself as a lobbyist for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in the United States, while according to information, BNP is a radical Islamic political party in Bangladesh that promotes Islamic rule and considers terrorist groups such as Hezbollah as its ally.
According to media reports, in 2006 then coalition government of Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami named a bridge as ‘Hezbollah Bridge’ honoring Lebanese terrorist group. The bridge is located in the southern part of the South Asian country, spanning the Batakhali River in an area known as Cox’s Bazaar. Junior communications minister Salahuddin Ahmed named the bridge after the Lebanese group at the height of Hezbollah’s war with Israel.
“I named the bridge Hezbollah because of our love for the Lebanese resistance group”, Salahuddin Ahmed told the French news agency, AFP.
“Hezbollah is the only group which is fighting Israel and the bridge is named after the group as a mark of honor”, he added.
Although the United States has identified Hezbollah as a terrorist group, and the Bangladesh government has been trying to convince US lawmakers that it is a “moderate” Muslim country, the government has taken no action to revoke the honor. During Hezbollah’s recent war with Israel, several Arab and Muslim countries were muted in their condemnations of the Jewish state and equivocal about supporting Hezbollah.
Bangladesh’s former Foreign Minister M. Morshed Khan, issued several strong statements on the war, calling Israel’s actions “state terrorism” and “religious terrorism” and accusing the United States of sponsoring it.
Later in 2013, this bridge was renamed.
