In the year and a half since Muhammad Syed was arrested and charged in the fatal shootings of three Muslim men, his family — refugees from Afghanistan — has remained in Albuquerque. One of his children got divorced. Another enrolled in community college to study to be a dental hygienist after pleading guilty to a federal weapons charge
City Desk ABQ dove into court documents, and police reports, and spoke to those who knew the family to find out what has happened since Syed was arrested in 2022.
The three eldest children — Lubna, 26, Adil, 24, and Shaheen, 22, — declined interview requests or did not respond to text messages. City Desk ABQ also went to the apartment where the family was living when Muhammad Syed was arrested and found they no longer lived there.
Monday morning, a jury found Muhammad Syed, now 53, guilty of murder in the death of Aftab Hussein, the friend of his former son-in-law. It was the first of three trials. Muhammad Syed’s wife attended at least the first two days of the trial but was not there when the verdict was read.
One of the most difficult cases
When the Syed family arrived in Albuquerque in 2016, Mazin Kadhim was their case manager at Lutheran Family Services, a nonprofit that helps refugees get settled.
He said Muhammad Syed was one of his most difficult cases.
“Sometimes he made me feel like he’s great and he’s doing everything he’s supposed to be doing to build a future here, and sometimes it’s completely the opposite,” Kadhim said.
Kadhim said Muhammad Syed would accomplish some goals, but not all of them and it took him longer to learn some of the basic skills he needed to live well in the United States.
Sometimes when he’d go and visit the family, Kadhim said, he’d see marks on Muhammad Syed’s wife but she wouldn’t want to report it.
She felt responsible
On Aug. 9, 2022, when Muhammad Syed was arrested the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms searched the family’s Southeast Albuquerque apartment. And they ended up calling an officer to the home to check on a possible suicidal person.
That person — Muhammad Syed’s oldest, Lubna Syed — had been crying. She told an FBI agent “If another one of my family members goes to jail, I don’t think I could live with myself,” according to an incident report.
As Lubna spoke to the officer that day, she told him she was upset because she felt as though she was responsible for the incidents taking place with her family members and that she had been upset earlier, according to the report.
The officer offered to take Lubna to the hospital to talk to a doctor, but she declined.
“She had not made any threats to kill herself. Lubna stated she was not feeling suicidal, homicidal, or like hurting herself. Lubna stated she felt safe staying at the residence with her family,” the officer writes in the report.
Within a week, Lubna Syed’s husband — who had allegedly been attacked by her father years earlier — filed for divorce. By the end of the month, those proceedings were finalized.
Moving forward with his life after a guilty plea
That same day, Aug. 9, Muhammad Syed’s son Shaheen Syed was arrested and federally charged for making false statements to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms to purchase a rifle in 2021.
He had claimed a Florida address instead of his Albuquerque address.
Days later, the U.S. Attorney’s office asked the court to hold him pending trial, claiming he was a flight risk and a danger to the community.
Cell phone records from the FBI placed Shaheen Syed in the vicinity of where Naeem Hussain was fatally shot on Aug. 5, 2022, in front of Lutheran Family Services, according to that motion.
Shaheen Syed spoke with his father when his phone was “somewhere in the general area” of the Islamic Center of New Mexico — where funeral services were being held for Aftab Hussein and Muhammad Afzaal Hussein — and soon after both his and his father’s phone pinged in an area that encompassed Lutheran Family Services, according to that motion.
Outside the courthouse Monday, after a guilty verdict was returned in the murder of Aftab Hussein, Prosecutor David Waymire said that during the investigation, police considered Shaheen Syed as a suspect, but after looking at that possibility quite extensively, there was no evidence found that would have implicated him.
“There’s a connection that he may have gone to the third scene, but not until after the homicide had been committed and so by all accounts of our review of the evidence, all three murderers which were done solely by Muhammad Syed as far as we can tell,” he said.
According to court documents, Shaheen Syed has never had any issues with substance abuse or previous criminal history.
Shaheen Syed was initially held pending trial and then released to a halfway house on Oct. 7, 2022.
On Jan. 9, 2023, Shaheen Syed, pleaded guilty to providing a false statement when purchasing a firearm. He served 70 days in prison and is currently on three years of supervised release. In January, he asked to be released early from supervision and his probation officers had no objection because he had complied with all conditions of release, according to court documents.
A federal judge denied the request in late February, although he said “It is encouraging to see that Mr. Syed had made positive changes in his life.”
Shaheen Syed’s attorney, John Anderson, declined to comment to City Desk ABQ other than to say that the case is resolved and Shaheen Syed is currently on supervised release.
Since the arrests, Shaheen Syed has enrolled in Central New Mexico Community College and is studying to be a dental hygienist, according to court documents.
Family Unrest
Before Muhammad Syed was arrested, police were called to the family’s home multiple times for battery cases. Since then, the family has had hardly any interaction with APD, aside from reporting three stolen motorcycles in September 2022 and a traffic violation last year.
Since then, the family has had little interaction with law enforcement. They moved out of their apartment two months ago and a new refugee family — from Syria — moved in.
At the time of Muhammad Syed’s arrest, police were investigating whether or not he was involved in the 2021 homicide of Mohammad Zahir Ahmadi.
Police have yet to make an arrest in the Ahmadi case. APD spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos told City Desk ABQ that investigators do not have any updates on the case.