Mr. Hadi said that Mr. Syed was clearly mad and visited the store to threaten his family on three occasions. Mr. Syed would call the brothers “kafir.” The word, intended to be derogatory, refers to nonbelievers who understand religion but opt to hide from it. The term was first used in Saudi Arabia to denigrate Shiite Muslims. It was later adopted by Taliban in Afghanistan.
“When we’d tell him to leave, he’d just go to his car and sit in the parking lot waiting for us for hours,” Mr. Hadi said. “We called the police but they never showed up.”
According to the police, they did not have any record of such requests for assistance. But in February 2020, surveillance images from the Islamic Center of New Mexico showed Mr. Syed slashing the tires of the car Mr. Hadi’s wife had parked outside the mosque there. The mosque leaders told Mr. Syed to stop, and he did so for several months.
Mr. Syed is now being accused of murder in the killings Aftab Hussein, Muhammad Afzaal Hussain. The police said that they were still preparing their cases for the other killings. Leaders from the Afghan community said they were relieved to see a suspect, but others resisted the temptation to link the killings with sectarian violence. They learned that the reasons for the murders, after decades of war, are often too complex to put into simple labels.
Salim Anseri, a leader of the city’s Afghan community who knew Mr. Syed as well as all the victims, is one of those who is not ready to make a judgment. “Maybe he’s mentally ill, or had personal issues with the victims,” he said of Mr. Syed. “From what I can tell, it was personal issues.”
For Mr. Hadi, such distinctions don’t matter much. Between fits of tears, he said he still had trouble going back to the spot where his brother’s life ended so abruptly.
“I still see him every day when I come to work,” Mr. Hadi said. “But he’s dead. Nothing is going to bring him back.”
Susan C. Beachy Kitty BennettContributed research
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