TAOS, N.M.: A prominent New York City Muslim cleric said on Thursday that he was baffled by events leading to his grandson’s presumed death and the arrest of his son and four other adult relatives on charges of abusing children at a compound in New Mexico.
Siraj WahHajj, a Brooklyn-based imam, spoke to reporters at his mosque, Masjid Taqwa, a day after his son, two daughters, a daughter-in-law and a son-in-law were charged with 11 felony counts of child abuse in New Mexico.
The son, Siraj Ibn WahHajj, 39, also was charged with custodial interference in the alleged abduction of his 3-year-old son, Abdul-Ghani WahHajj, last December from the Atlanta home of the child’s mother.
The search for the missing boy and his father ultimately led investigators to the ramshackle compound on the outskirts of Amalia, New Mexico, north of Taos near the Colorado border.
Eleven children ranging from 1 to 15 years of age were found ragged and starving at the compound last Friday after sheriff’s deputies raided it. They were placed in protective custody.
The imam, who was the first Muslim to offer a prayer before the US House of Representatives, said he is the biological grandfather of nine of the children in the case, including Abdul. Remains of a young boy believed to be those of Abdul were found at the compound on Monday.
The elder WahHajj said, without elaborating, that some of the children have said they saw Abdul alive as recently as three weeks ago, adding, “One of them said, ‘Yeah, we buried him over there.’“
His son, said by authorities to have been heavily armed when arrested, was taken into custody with his brother-in-law, Lucas Morton. His wife Jany Leveille and two sisters, Subhannah and Hujrah WahHajj, were detained and later arrested.
In court petitions seeking to hold them without bond, prosecutors accused them of training the children to use firearms to carry out school shootings, but no related charges have been filed.
The elder Siraj WahHajj said he has been cooperating with authorities in their investigation and that he had not had direct communication with his son since a search for him was launched after Abdul’s disappearance.
He said he did not know what his son and daughters were doing in New Mexico or what prompted them to go into seclusion, but he was anxious to get to the bottom of a situation he described as “bizarre” and “weird.”
“As far as my son and my daughters are concerned, I want to make sure they get good legal representation. We want to find out what happened,” he said. “Even if it’s against them. We stand in judgment. God stands in judgment against them, and we stand on the side of truth.”
The cleric recounted having a brief exchange with his daughter Subhannah at some point through a go-between on Facebook. Subhannah later reached out to someone in Atlanta saying, “’I need some food. We are starving.”
The imam said he instructed that intermediary to “find out where we should send the food.” He said once his daughter provided the location, “We gave it to the police. That’s why the police came in.”
His account dovetailed with a chronology given earlier in the week by Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe, who said he obtained a search warrant for the compound after police in Georgia got a plea about starvation from someone in the compound and shared it with his investigators.
The imam said his son had worked for a New York company providing security to corporate executives and celebrities and was licensed to carry firearms in 36 states. He described him as “high-strung” at times but not violent or “radical.”
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Brooklyn imam dismayed by family’s tragedy at New Mexico compound
Brooklyn imam dismayed by family’s tragedy at New Mexico compound
- The missing boy's grandfather, Siraj Wahhaj, a Muslim cleric who leads a well-known New York City mosque
- The father at some point told his wife he wanted to perform an exorcism on the boy
China’s top diplomat to visit Somalia on Africa tour
- Stop in Mogadishu provides diplomatic boost after Israel became the first country to formally recognize breakaway Somaliland
- Tour focusses on Beijing's strategic trade access across eastern and southern Africa
BEIJING: China’s top diplomat began his annual New Year tour of Africa on Wednesday, focusing on strategic trade access across eastern and southern Africa as Beijing seeks to secure key shipping routes and resource supply lines.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi will travel to Ethiopia, Africa’s fastest-growing large economy; Somalia, a Horn of Africa state offering access to key global shipping lanes; Tanzania, a logistics hub linking minerals-rich central Africa to the Indian Ocean; and Lesotho, a small southern African economy squeezed by US trade measures. His trip this year runs until January 12.
Beijing aims to highlight countries it views as model partners of President Xi Jinping’s flagship “Belt and Road” infrastructure program and to expand export markets, particularly in young, increasingly affluent economies such as Ethiopia, where the IMF forecasts growth of 7.2 percent this year.
China, the world’s largest bilateral lender, faces growing competition from the European Union to finance African infrastructure, as countries hit by pandemic-era debt strains now seek investment over loans.
“The real litmus test for 2026 isn’t just the arrival of Chinese investment, but the ‘Africanization’ of that investment. As Wang Yi visits hubs like Ethiopia and Tanzania, the conversation must move beyond just building roads to building factories,” said Judith Mwai, policy analyst at Development Reimagined, an Africa-focussed consultancy.
“For African leaders, this tour is an opportunity to demand that China’s ‘small yet beautiful’ projects specifically target our industrial gaps, turning African raw materials into finished products on African soil, rather than just facilitating their exit,” she added.
On his start-of-year trip in 2025, Wang visited Namibia, the Republic of Congo, Chad and Nigeria.
His visit to Somalia will be the first by a Chinese foreign minister since the 1980s and is expected to provide Mogadishu with a diplomatic boost after Israel became the first country to formally recognize the breakaway Republic of Somaliland, a northern region that declared itself independent in 1991.
Beijing, which reiterated its support for Somalia after the Israeli announcement in December, is keen to reinforce its influence around the Gulf of Aden, the entrance to the Red Sea and a vital corridor for Chinese trade transiting the Suez Canal to Europe.
Further south, Tanzania is central to Beijing’s plan to secure access to Africa’s vast copper deposits. Chinese firms are refurbishing the Tazara Railway that runs through the country into Zambia. Li Qiang made a landmark trip to Zambia in November, the first visit by a Chinese premier in 28 years.
The railway is widely seen as a counterweight to the US and European Union-backed Lobito Corridor, which connects Zambia to Atlantic ports via Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
By visiting the southern African kingdom of Lesotho, Wang aims to highlight Beijing’s push to position itself as a champion of free trade. Last year, China offered tariff-free market access to its $19 trillion economy for the world’s poorest nations, fulfilling a pledge by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the 2024 China-Africa Cooperation summit in Beijing.
Lesotho, one of the world’s poorest nations with a gross domestic product of just over $2 billion, was among the countries hardest hit by US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs last year, facing duties of up to 50 percent on its exports to the United States.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi will travel to Ethiopia, Africa’s fastest-growing large economy; Somalia, a Horn of Africa state offering access to key global shipping lanes; Tanzania, a logistics hub linking minerals-rich central Africa to the Indian Ocean; and Lesotho, a small southern African economy squeezed by US trade measures. His trip this year runs until January 12.
Beijing aims to highlight countries it views as model partners of President Xi Jinping’s flagship “Belt and Road” infrastructure program and to expand export markets, particularly in young, increasingly affluent economies such as Ethiopia, where the IMF forecasts growth of 7.2 percent this year.
China, the world’s largest bilateral lender, faces growing competition from the European Union to finance African infrastructure, as countries hit by pandemic-era debt strains now seek investment over loans.
“The real litmus test for 2026 isn’t just the arrival of Chinese investment, but the ‘Africanization’ of that investment. As Wang Yi visits hubs like Ethiopia and Tanzania, the conversation must move beyond just building roads to building factories,” said Judith Mwai, policy analyst at Development Reimagined, an Africa-focussed consultancy.
“For African leaders, this tour is an opportunity to demand that China’s ‘small yet beautiful’ projects specifically target our industrial gaps, turning African raw materials into finished products on African soil, rather than just facilitating their exit,” she added.
On his start-of-year trip in 2025, Wang visited Namibia, the Republic of Congo, Chad and Nigeria.
His visit to Somalia will be the first by a Chinese foreign minister since the 1980s and is expected to provide Mogadishu with a diplomatic boost after Israel became the first country to formally recognize the breakaway Republic of Somaliland, a northern region that declared itself independent in 1991.
Beijing, which reiterated its support for Somalia after the Israeli announcement in December, is keen to reinforce its influence around the Gulf of Aden, the entrance to the Red Sea and a vital corridor for Chinese trade transiting the Suez Canal to Europe.
Further south, Tanzania is central to Beijing’s plan to secure access to Africa’s vast copper deposits. Chinese firms are refurbishing the Tazara Railway that runs through the country into Zambia. Li Qiang made a landmark trip to Zambia in November, the first visit by a Chinese premier in 28 years.
The railway is widely seen as a counterweight to the US and European Union-backed Lobito Corridor, which connects Zambia to Atlantic ports via Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
By visiting the southern African kingdom of Lesotho, Wang aims to highlight Beijing’s push to position itself as a champion of free trade. Last year, China offered tariff-free market access to its $19 trillion economy for the world’s poorest nations, fulfilling a pledge by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the 2024 China-Africa Cooperation summit in Beijing.
Lesotho, one of the world’s poorest nations with a gross domestic product of just over $2 billion, was among the countries hardest hit by US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs last year, facing duties of up to 50 percent on its exports to the United States.
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