Muslim Killings in Albuquerque Stir Sectarian Ghosts
Source: New York Times
Muslim Killings in Albuquerque Stir Sectarian Ghosts
An Afghan family struggled for a foothold in a new home in the U.S. Now one of them is charged with killing fellow Muslims.
By Simon Romero, Miriam Jordan, Ava Sasani and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Aug. 15, 2022
ALBUQUERQUE — Five years ago, Muhammad Syed was eyeing a new life with his family in a new land. They had fled war-torn Afghanistan and resettled as refugees into a small duplex near the airport in Albuquerque. Mr. Syed found work as a truck driver. But then the troubles began.
Coming from a culture where women largely stayed at home, he grew enraged with his wife as she was learning how to drive, grabbing her hair and kicking her out of the car, according to one of several reports of domestic violence the police were called to investigate. A security camera showed him slashing the tires of another woman’s car outside Albuquerque’s largest mosque, and he was banned from coming back to their place of worship.
When his daughter enrolled in college, he tried to force her to bring her brother to class as a chaperone. And when she became romantically involved with an Afghan man from a different branch of Islam — a Shiite, while Mr. Syed and his family were Sunni — he attacked the young man and threatened to kill him, the man later told the police.
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Now Mr. Syed has been identified as the leading suspect in the harrowing string of murders of four men, including Mr. Hadi’s younger brother, three of them Shiite Muslims, and the authorities said on Monday that Mr. Syed’s son, Shaheen Syed, purchased weapons with his father and may have helped him surveil one of the victims before his death.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/us/albuquerque-muslim-killings.html
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