ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.: An Afghan refugee was found guilty Monday of first-degree murder in one of three fatal shootings that shook Albuquerque’s Muslim community during the summer of 2022.
Muhammad Syed faces life in prison for killing 41-year-old Aftab Hussein on July 26, 2022. He also will stand trial in the coming months in the other two slayings.
During the trial, prosecutors presented cellphone data that showed his phone was in the area when the shooting occurred, and a ballistics expert testified that casings and projectiles recovered from the scene had been fired from a rifle that was found hidden under Syed’s bed.
Defense attorneys argued that prosecutors had no evidence that Syed was the one who pulled the trigger. They said others who lived in his home could also access his phone, the vehicle and the rifle.
The defense called no witnesses; Syed tearfully declined to testify in his own defense.
Prosecutors on Monday said they were pleased that jurors agreed it was a deliberate killing. However, they acknowledged that no testimony during the weeklong trial nor any court filings addressed a possible motive or detailed any interactions that Syed might have had with Hussein before the killing.
“We were not able to uncover anything that we would indicate would be a motive that would explain this,” Deputy District Attorney David Waymire said outside the courthouse. “As best we can tell, this could be a case of a serial killer where there’s a motive known only to them and not something that we can really understand.”
Defense attorneys said the conviction would be appealed once the other two trials are complete. They too said a motive has yet to be uncovered.
The three ambush-style killings happened over the course of several days, leaving authorities scrambling to determine if race or religion might have been behind the crimes. It was not long before the investigation shifted away from possible hate crimes to what prosecutors described to jurors as the “willful and very deliberate” actions of another member of the Muslim community.
Syed, who speaks Pashto and required the help of translators throughout the trial, settled in the US with his family several years before the killings. Prosecutors described him during previous court hearings as having a violent history. His public defenders argued that previous allegations of domestic violence never resulted in convictions.
Syed also is accused of killing Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, a 27-year-old urban planner who was gunned down Aug. 1, 2022, while taking his evening walk, and Naeem Hussain, who was shot four days later as he sat in his vehicle outside a refugee resettlement agency on the city’s south side.
Muhammad Afzaal Hussain’s older brother, Muhammad Imtiaz Hussain, was there Monday to hear the verdict. He has been following the cases closely and like others in the community is troubled that there’s still no answer as to why his brother and the others were targeted.
A student leader at the University of New Mexico who was active in politics and later worked for the city of Española, Muhammad Afzaal Hussain had a bright future, his brother said. They had come to the United States from Pakistan for educational and economic opportunities.
He said the life they had planned was just starting to come to fruition when his brother was killed.
“It was a big loss,” he said.
Police also identified Syed as the suspect in the killing of another Muslim man in 2021, but no charges have been filed in that case.
Authorities issued a public plea for help following the third killing in the summer of 2022. They shared photographs of a vehicle believed to be involved in the crimes, resulting in tips that led to Syed.
Syed denied involvement in the killings after being stopped more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Albuquerque. He told authorities he was on his way to Texas to find a new home for his family, saying he was concerned about the killings in Albuquerque.
The judge prohibited prosecutors from directly introducing as evidence statements Syed made to a detective while being questioned. Defense attorneys argued that Syed’s rights were violated because the detective, through an interpreter, did not adequately inform Syed of his right to a court-appointed attorney.
During the trial, prosecutors gave jurors a rundown of what happened the night of the first killing: Hussein parked at his apartment complex at around 10 p.m. and had just stepped out of his vehicle with his keys still in his hand when gunfire erupted.
“He stood no chance,” prosecutor Jordan Machin said during closing arguments. Machin said Syed had been lying in wait and that he continued to shoot even as Hussein lay on the ground.
Officers found Hussein with multiple wounds that stretched from his neck down to his feet. Investigators testified that some of the high-caliber rounds went through his body and pierced the car.
Prosecutors showed photos of Hussein’s bullet-riddled car and said the victim was killed nearly instantly.
Afghan refugee convicted in murder case that shocked Albuquerque Muslim community
https://arab.news/8u8r9
Afghan refugee convicted in murder case that shocked Albuquerque Muslim community
- Muhammad Syed faces life in prison for killing Aftab Hussein in 2022
- Syed also will stand trial in the coming months for two other slayings
Philippines swelters in scorching heat as mercury hits record high in Manila
- Children will attend remote classes on Monday, Tuesday in flashback to COVID times
- Temperature in capital’s Metro region could surpass 40 degrees next month, forecasters say
MANILA: The Philippines is bracing for more blistering weather as temperatures in the capital region rose to a record high over the weekend.
Unusually hot temperatures have been recorded across South and Southeast Asia in recent days, forcing schools to close and authorities to issue health warnings.
In Metro Manila on Saturday, the mercury hit 38.8 degrees Celsius, surpassing the previous record set in 1915.
Elsewhere in the country, the weather has been even hotter, with Tarlac province seeing the mercury hit 40.3 degrees earlier in the year.
The hottest ever temperature recorded in the Philippines was 42.2 degrees in 1912.
Glaiza Escullar of state weather agency PAGASA told Arab News it was likely that some parts of the country would continue to see temperatures of 40 degrees and above until the second week of May.
March, April and May are typically the hottest and driest months of the year, but conditions this year have been exacerbated by the El Nino weather phenomenon.
The heat index, which also takes into account humidity, reached 45 degrees on Saturday, which the weather agency classifies as “danger.” It said it could hit 46 degrees on Monday.
“We are issuing a heat index warning just to emphasize that apart from the hot weather or high temperature, relative humidity has a factor in terms of health,” Escullar said.
“If (a person) is dehydrated or he is not in a good condition, the body tends to overheat because the sweating process is slowed down by the high relative humidity.”
In response to the searing heat and a nationwide transport strike, the Department of Education announced on Sunday that all public schools would be closed on Monday and Tuesday but that classes would be held remotely.
Jeepney drivers are staging a three-day strike in protest at the government’s plan to phase out the iconic vehicles.
Many schools in the Philippines do not have air conditioning and several were forced to close earlier this month and hold remote classes in a reminder of the COVID-19 pandemic.
High school student Ivan Garcia told Arab News the soaring heat was affecting his studies.
“The weather is annoyingly hot … I cannot focus on doing my school work,” he said.
Ninth-grader Adrian Reyes said he preferred to work from home.
“I usually leave the house around noontime and it’s really a challenge especially for me and others like me who have to commute to get to school,” he said.
“I prefer the asynchronous mode of learning because we have aircon at home.”
Wiping out polio ‘not guaranteed,’ support needed — Bill Gates
- Pakistan and the neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic
- Gates warned against complacency in tackling the disease as he welcomed $500 million pledge from Saudi Arabia
LONDON: Success in the fight to wipe out polio is not guaranteed, according to tech billionaire turned philanthropist Bill Gates, whose foundation has poured billions into the effort.
Gates warned against complacency in tackling the deadly viral disease as he welcomed a $500 million pledge from Saudi Arabia on Sunday to fight polio over the next five years, bringing it in line with the US as one of the biggest national donors.
However, there is still a $1.2 billion dollar funding gap in the $4.8 billion budget for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) up to 2026, a spokesperson said. The new money from Saudi Arabia will go some way toward closing that.
Saudi Arabia has supported polio eradication for more than 20 years, but the significant increase in funding comes amid a “challenging” situation, said Abdullah Al Moallem, director of health at the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center, the kingdom’s aid arm.
Cases of polio, a viral disease that used to paralyze thousands of children every year, have declined by more than 99 percent since 1988 thanks to mass vaccination campaigns.
But the aim of getting cases down to zero, particularly in the two countries where the wild form of the virus remains endemic – Afghanistan and Pakistan – has been held up by insecurity in the regions where pockets of children remain unvaccinated.
“It’s not guaranteed that we will succeed,” Gates told Reuters in an online call last week. “I feel very strongly that we can succeed, but it’s been difficult.”
The support of powerful Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia would help, he added, particularly in addressing some lingering suspicions about vaccination.
The foundation said it would open a regional office in Riyadh to support the polio and other regional programs.
It is allocating $4 million to humanitarian relief in Gaza, to be distributed through UNICEF, it said. The King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center will also allocate $4 million, it said.
The first missed target for eradicating polio was in 2000, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest donor trying to realize that goal.
“If we’re still here 10 years from now, people might be urging me to give up,” Gates said. “But I don’t think we will be. If things go well, we’ll be done in three years,” he said.
Chants of ‘shame on you’ greet guests at White House correspondents’ dinner shadowed by war in Gaza
- “Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point
WASHINGTON: The war in Gaza spurred large protests outside a glitzy roast with President Joe Biden, journalists, politicians and celebrities Saturday but went all but unmentioned by participants inside, with Biden instead using the annual White House correspondents’ dinner to make both jokes and grim warnings about Republican rival Donald Trump’s fight to reclaim the U.S. presidency.
An evening normally devoted to presidents, journalists and comedians taking outrageous pokes at political scandals and each other often seemed this year to illustrate the difficulty of putting aside the coming presidential election and the troubles in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Biden opened his roast with a direct but joking focus on Trump, calling him “sleepy Don,” in reference to a nickname Trump had given the president previously.
Despite being similar in age, Biden said, the two presidential hopefuls have little else in common. “My vice president actually endorses me,” Biden said. Former Trump Vice President Mike Pence has refused to endorse Trump’s reelection bid.
But the president quickly segued to a grim speech about what he believes is at stake this election, saying that another Trump administration would be even more harmful to America than his first term.
“We have to take this serious — eight years ago we could have written it off as ‘Trump talk’ but not after January 6,” Biden told the audience, referring to the supporters of Trump who stormed the Capitol after Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election.
Trump did not attend Saturday's dinner and never attended the annual banquet as president. In 2011, he sat in the audience, and glowered through a roasting by then-President Barack Obama of Trump's reality-television celebrity status. Obama's sarcasm then was so scalding that many political watchers linked it to Trump's subsequent decision to run for president in 2016.
Biden’s speech, which lasted around 10 minutes, made no mention of the ongoing war or the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
One of the few mentions came from Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, who briefly noted some 100 journalists killed in Israel's 6-month-old war against Hamas in Gaza. In an evening dedicated in large part to journalism, O’Donnell cited journalists who have been detained across the world, including Americans Evan Gershkovich in Russia and Austin Tice, who is believed to be held in Syria. Families of both men were in attendance as they have been at previous dinners.
To get inside Saturday's dinner, some guests had to hurry through hundreds of protesters outraged over the mounting humanitarian disaster for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. They condemned Biden for his support of Israel's military campaign and Western news outlets for what they said was undercoverage and misrepresentation of the conflict.
“Shame on you!” protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.
“Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.
Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with “press” insignia.
Ralliers cried “Free, free Palestine." They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window.
Criticism of the Biden administration's support for Israel's military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments and withstanding police sweeps in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel's offensive and complain of antisemitism.
Biden’s motorcade Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding the crowds of demonstrators.
Saturday's event drew nearly 3,000 people. Celebrities included Academy Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Scarlett Johansson, Jon Hamm and Chris Pine.
Both the president and comedian Colin Jost, who spoke after Biden, made jabs at the age of both the candidates for president. “I’m not saying both candidates are old. But you know Jimmy Carter is out there thinking, ‘maybe I can win this thing,’” Jost said. “He’s only 99.”
Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”
Protest organizers said they aimed to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel's military since the war began in October.
More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether.
“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering," the letter stated. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”
One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents' Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to a request for comment.
According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.
“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price — their lives — to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.
Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza."
In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including The Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.
“How can you still go when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to?" a demonstrator asked guests heading in. "You are complicit.”
___ Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo, Aamer Madhani, Fatima Hussein and Tom Strong contributed to this report.
UK to build memorial to Muslim soldiers who fought in world wars
- Monument, featuring Islamic calligraphy, will reflect ‘incredible narrative,’ architect says
- About 8m Muslim soldiers and laborers stood alongside Allied forces
LONDON: The UK is building a war memorial to the millions of Muslim soldiers who served alongside British and Commonwealth forces during the two world wars, Sky News reported.
The 13.2-meter-tall monument, which has been several years in the planning, will stand at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. Built from brick and terracotta it will be inscribed with the personal stories of the soldiers.
About 2.5 million Muslim soldiers and laborers served in the militaries of the Allied powers during the First World War and about 5.5 million in the Second World War.
Benny O’Looney, the memorial’s architect, said: “The idea is, as you approach the memorial, it draws you in. And you can see there’s more detail, more information, more craftsmanship.
“The idea is to show a panorama of the Muslim soldiers’ service in the world war from gritty 1914 — this incredible narrative of plugging the gap and saving the expeditionary forces on the Western Front.”
The inspiration for the design, which features Islamic calligraphy, came from journeys to the Indian subcontinent, O’Looney said.
The monument will be erected on a site already containing memorials to Sikhs, Gurkhas and others.
Irfan Malik, a doctor from Nottingham whose ancestors served in both world wars, said: “I’m so glad we are near to fruition now, so that we can remember this forgotten history of the Muslim soldiers in both of the great wars and looking at Muslim contributions globally as well.
“Both of my great-grandfathers — Capt. Ghulam Mohammad and Subedar (roughly equivalent to warrant officer) Mohammad Khan — were part of the Great War and my two grandfathers were part of the Second World War, serving in Burma.
“They all descended from Dulmial village, which is based in the salt range in Punjab in present-day Pakistan, a very famous military village.”
The memorial would serve as a “symbol of remembrance of those campaigns, the sacrifices made and also an opportunity to educate our younger generation to improve community cohesion in this country,” Malik said.
France charges Daesh official’s ex-wife with crimes against humanity
- The woman identified only as Sonia M. was accused by a Yazidi woman of raping her twice and knowing that her husband was raping her, Le Parisien reported
- The Yazidi woman was 16 when she was taken captive by Daesh militants and forced into slavery by top Daesh official Abdelnasser Benyoucef
PARIS: France has charged the ex-wife of a top Daesh official with crimes against humanity on suspicion of enslaving a teenage Yazidi girl in Syria, French media reported.
A woman identified as Sonia M., the former wife of the jihadist group’s head of external operations Abdelnasser Benyoucef, was charged on March 14, Le Parisien said Saturday.
The Yazidi woman, who was 16 when she was forced into slavery by Benyoucef, accused Sonia M. of raping her twice and knowing that her husband was raping her, the report said.
The woman, now 25, said she was held for more than a month in 2015 in Syria, where she was not allowed to eat, drink or shower without Sonia M.’s permission.
Sonia M. denied the allegations against her in a March 14 interview with French investigators, saying “only one rape” had been committed by her former husband.
The teenager “left her room freely, ate what she wanted, went to the toilet when she needed to,” she said in her interview, seen by AFP.
Sonia M.’s lawyer Nabil Boudi slammed the charges as “opportunistic accusations,” saying that prosecutors were seeking “to make her responsible for the most serious crimes, because the courts have not managed to apprehend the real perpetrators.”
An arrest warrant has been issued for Benyoucef, according to a source close to the investigation.
France launched an investigation in 2016 into genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria since 2012.
The probe has focused on crimes suffered by members of the Yazidi and Christian communities as well as members of the Sheitat tribe, according to France’s PNAT anti-terror unit.
“The aim is to document these crimes and identify the French perpetrators who belong to the Islamic State organization,” PNAT told AFP.
