One Police Plaza

Sins of the Father?

August 13, 2018

The Bible hedges its bets on whether the sins of the father should be visited on the son. Now we have the Wahhaj family.

Siraj Ibn Wahhaj and his two sisters, Hujrah and Subhannah, have been discovered to be the parents of nine malnourished children, living off the grid in a ramshackle camp in New Mexico. Siraj is also suspected of having kidnapped his 4-year-old son from his mother in Georgia, whose remains authorities believe they have discovered at the camp.

Prosecutors say that when they arrested Siraj, he had a loaded revolver in his pocket and five 30-round magazines in pouches on his belt. Four more guns were found in a bedroom as well as an AR-15 rifle. Prosecutors claim he was training at least one child to carry out school shootings a la Columbine, Sandy Hook or Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Siraj and his sisters are the offspring of Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an African-American convert to Islam who is a charismatic and controversial figure with an international following.

The imam testified as a character witness for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing conspirator Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as the Blind Sheik. The feds named Siraj an unindicted co-conspirator, a term prosecutors use when they believe a person is guilty but lack proof.

On the other hand, Siraj was the first Muslim cleric to offer an opening prayer for Congress. After the 2009 Fort Hood, Texas, shootings by a Muslim military doctor, he was among eight Islamic leaders invited to meet with then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. 

Kelly, meanwhile, placed the imam high on the NYPD’s list of terrorist suspects. According to Intelligence Division documents made available to NYPD Confidential and The Associated Press — the accuracy of which have been proven to be questionable — Wahhaj was listed among the department’s “Tier One Persons of Interest.”

The Masjid At-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn, which he leads, was listed as one of the NYPD’s nine “Tier One Mosques of Concern,” with the notation, “a large number of congregants are ex-convicts.”

Last week, Taqwa spokesman Ali Abdul-Karim Judan said in a Facebook video that the news media and the authorities were engaging in “propaganda.” “Look how this case has turned from a domestic situation, and now they’re trying to create an atmosphere where his son is involved with an extremist radical group,” Judan said.

Indeed, the imam appeared less a terrorist than a concerned father and a harsh religious leader. He told reporters he had tipped off New Mexico authorities to his children and appeared to praise their raid, saying, “They waited to pick the right moment so there would be no casualties, no shootouts.”

He said his son and two daughters had “cut ties” to the family. “I feel bad as a parent they didn’t feel comfortable enough to come to me.“

The Daily News quoted him saying his children deserved no mercy if they had played a part in his grandson’s death. “God stands in judgement against them. … Whoever is responsible that person should be accountable.”

GARRY’S REVENGE [Con’t] Michael Coppola, the chief of the Palisades Interstate Parkway police, has been arrested on narcotics charges. Coppola had been suspended last month after he allegedly offered incentives to officers to write more tickets and make more arrests.

So, who is the happiest guy in the world to hear this news? He’s our old friend, ex-NYPD deputy commissioner and ex-Chicago police chief Garry McCarthy, who ended up paying $22,000 in legal and other fees after the Palisades police took him and his wife Gina into custody in handcuffs while protesting a parking ticket issued to his daughter.