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In the six years since he resettled in the United States from Afghanistan, the primary suspect in the slayings of four Muslim men in Albuquerque has been arrested several times for domestic violence and captured on camera slashing the tires of a woman’s car, according to police and court records.
The lengthy pattern of violence — which began not long after Muhammad Syed arrived in the states — has shocked members of the city’s small, close-knit Muslim community, some of whom knew him from the local mosque and who initially had assumed the killer was an outsider with a bias against the Islamic religion. Now, they are coming to terms with the idea that they never really understood the man.
“I think based on knowing his history now — and we didn’t before — he’s obviously a disturbed individual. He obviously has a violent tendency,” said Ahmad Assed, president of the Islamic Center of New Mexico.
Police say Syed, 51, was acquainted with his victims and was likely motivated by “interpersonal conflicts.”
He was arrested Monday night and remains in custody. Prosecutors say he is a dangerous man and plan to ask a judge next week to keep him locked up pending trial on murder charges in connection with two of the shooting deaths. Syed is also the primary suspect in the other two homicides, but police say they will not rush to charge him in those cases as long as he remains in jail and doesn’t pose a threat to the community. The married father of six has denied involvement in the killings; his defense attorneys have declined to comment.
Few details have emerged publicly about Syed’s life before he and his family came to America in 2016, but a U.S. government document obtained by The Associated Press says he graduated from Rehman Baba High School in western Kabul in 1990. Between 2010 and 2012, he worked as a cook for the Al Bashar Jala Construction Company.
In December 2012, Syed fled Afghanistan with his wife and children, the report states. The family made its way to Pakistan, where Syed sought work as a refrigerator technician. A native Pashto speaker who was also fluent in Dari, he was admitted to the United States in 2016 as a refugee.
The very next year, according to court records, a boyfriend of Syed’s daughter alleged that Syed, his wife and one of Syed’s sons pulled him out of a car and punched and kicked him before driving away.
