Over ten days in the summer of 2022, three Muslim men were shot dead in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Aftab Hussein, 41, was killed on the night of July 26. Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, 27, a city planning director and former student leader at the University of New Mexico, was killed on August 1. Naeem Hussain, 25, was killed on August 5, after he had attended funeral services for the men who died before him. All three had come to the United States from South Asia, and all were part of the city's small Muslim community.
For about two weeks that community lived in fear that someone was hunting its men. The national news followed the case, President Joe Biden condemned the killings, and the FBI joined the search. When the arrest came, it was not an outsider. Police took into custody Muhammad Syed, 51, an Afghan refugee who had lived in Albuquerque for about five years and who attended the same mosque as the victims. Tips from within the Muslim community had led investigators to him.
Syed denied any part in the killings. In March 2024 a jury convicted him of the first-degree murder of Aftab Hussein. That September he pleaded no contest to two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Muhammad Afzaal Hussain and Naeem Hussain. He was sentenced in November 2024 to life in prison, with at least 30 years to serve before he can be considered for parole, and on May 7, 2026, the New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously upheld the murder conviction. Prosecutors told the court and the press that they had found no motive. Police also named Syed the main suspect in an earlier killing, in November 2021, but he was not charged with it.
The Associated Press, drawing on records and interviews after his arrest, reported that Syed graduated from a high school in western Kabul in 1990. Between 2010 and 2012 he worked as a cook for a construction company in Afghanistan. In December 2012 he left the country with his wife and children for Pakistan, where he looked for work as a refrigerator technician. He is a native speaker of Pashto and also speaks Dari; through every court hearing that followed his arrest he spoke through interpreters, and the AP reported that he speaks no English. He and his family were admitted to the United States as refugees in 2016. In 2022 the AP described him as a married father of six.
His own account of his past was different in one respect. He told detectives that he had served with the Afghan National Army Special Operations Command, and that he liked the rifle found in his home because he had used one like it in Afghanistan. A United States government profile of Syed examined by the AP listed no military experience. The AP noted that he turned 40 in 2011, the year that special operations force was formed, and Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, a senior fellow at the Defense Priorities think tank, told the agency that the claim was "a little fishy," because members of such units are usually much younger. Years later, at the hearing where Syed entered his pleas, his lawyer Thomas Clark gave the Albuquerque Journal yet another version: that Syed had been an air conditioning repairman in the Green Zone in Kabul and had served briefly in the Afghan army. Clark said he had not been able to see Syed's military records.
In Albuquerque, Syed had several brushes with the police before 2022. The Albuquerque Journal, citing court records, reported three misdemeanor battery arrests, two of them on domestic violence allegations involving members of his own family, and an arrest for resisting an officer during a traffic stop. All of those cases were dismissed. The AP reported that two of the domestic cases ended when the people involved declined to press charges, and that a third was dismissed after Syed completed a pretrial intervention program. Because none of the cases ended in a conviction, his public defenders told the court in August 2022 that he had no criminal history.
Aftab Hussein was 41. Police said he came from Pakistan; Dawn, the Pakistani newspaper, described him as having come from Peshawar. He and Muhammad Afzaal Hussain were members of the same mosque, the AP reported. He was shot dead in Albuquerque at about 10 p.m. on July 26, 2022.
Muhammad Afzaal Hussain was 27. His family had come from Rawalpindi, according to Dawn, and he had moved from Pakistan to New Mexico to study regional planning at the University of New Mexico, where he earned a master's degree. The university's student newspaper, the Daily Lobo, recalled that he won the presidency of the Graduate and Professional Student Association with 72 percent of the vote, chaired the student fee review board, and pushed for more openness and fairness in how student money was shared out. He held a leadership role on the campaign of Representative Melanie Stansbury. At the time of his death he was the planning and land use director for the city of Española, a commute of about 90 minutes each way. He played cricket with a local team, finished runner-up in a 2022 tapeball tournament in Albuquerque, loved salmon fishing at Navajo Lake, and during the COVID-19 pandemic became his family's barber. He lived with his older brother's family and was, his brother told the Daily Lobo, like another guardian to his nieces and nephews, taking them camping, swimming and to play cricket. He was shot dead in Albuquerque on August 1, 2022. Memorials were held in Española and at an interfaith gathering.
Naeem Hussain was 25. Police identified him as a native of Pakistan; Dawn, in an early report, wrote that he had lived in Peshawar and Islamabad before he came to the United States. He worked as a truck driver. On August 5, 2022, he attended funeral services for the earlier victims at the Islamic Center of New Mexico, and that same day he was shot dead in Albuquerque. Two of his brothers would later speak at Syed's sentencing.
Police had not linked the first two killings to anyone when Naeem Hussain died. Dawn reported on August 7, 2022, that police and the FBI had told the Islamic Center of New Mexico before his death that they believed the earlier killings were connected, and that Deputy Commander Kyle Hartsock of the Albuquerque Police Department had said the victims shared their race and religion. A Washington-based Muslim civil rights group offered a $5,000 reward, and the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League condemned the attacks.
The killings frightened Muslims across the city and beyond. The AP reported that Albuquerque's Muslim community numbered about 4,500 people and that many of its members were afraid to leave their homes; city officials offered to bring them meals, and some people thought about leaving town. Ahmad Assed, president of the Islamic Center of New Mexico, told ABC News that the community had never experienced anything like it and feared for the safety of its children and families. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham sent additional state police to help the Albuquerque police and the FBI, and said, "This is not who we are." President Biden said such attacks "have no place in America," and Vice President Kamala Harris also condemned them. The FBI formed a task force of more than 100 investigators, analysts and specialists, and rewards offered by various groups reached a combined $30,000, according to the Albuquerque Journal's report on the arrest.
Police released photographs of a car they wanted to find, a dark gray or silver four-door Volkswagen with tinted windows that they thought might be a Jetta. The AP reported that surveillance video had shown a gray sedan leaving the scene of the August 5 shooting. Tips, many of them from within the Muslim community, and more video helped police identify the car, which was registered to Syed.
Detectives obtained a warrant to search Syed's home in southeast Albuquerque and followed his car when he drove away. State police, Albuquerque police and the FBI stopped him near Santa Rosa, about 110 miles east of the city, as he drove east on Interstate 40. The AP reported that he was taken into custody on the night of Monday, August 8, 2022; later Albuquerque Journal reports give the arrest date as August 9. A SWAT team searched the family's apartment, and police recovered several firearms from the home and the car. Syed told officers that he was on his way to Texas, to Houston by one account, to find a new home for his family because of the recent violence against Muslims in Albuquerque. Police said they believed he was leaving the state to escape after the killing of Naeem Hussain.
Police charged him at first with two murders, those of Aftab Hussein and Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, because shell casings from both scenes were linked to a gun found at his home. They called him the most likely suspect in the death of Naeem Hussain and in the November 2021 killing. Two of his sons were questioned and released. According to the Albuquerque Journal, Syed told investigators that he had known Naeem Hussain since 2016 and recognized Aftab Hussein from community gatherings, and denied having anything to do with the shootings.
At a news conference on the arrest, Police Chief Harold Medina said it was not yet clear whether the deaths should be classed as hate crimes, serial killings or both. Police said the victims likely knew Syed to some degree and that an "interpersonal conflict" may have led to the shootings. Asked about a possible dispute between Sunni and Shia Muslims, Hartsock said motives were still being explored and that it was unclear whether any conflict was the motive or only part of it. Leaders of the Islamic Center urged caution. Assed called the arrest a relief, stressed that Syed was presumed innocent and warned against conclusions about his motive, and the center's general secretary, Aneela Abad, said the Sunni and Shia communities in New Mexico had warm ties. Muhammad Afzaal Hussain's older brother said he was relieved but wanted to know why. Raúl Torrez, then the Bernalillo County district attorney, said Syed could face further state and federal charges.
On August 17, 2022, District Judge Joseph Montaño ordered Syed held in jail until trial, agreeing with prosecutors that he was a danger to the community. Syed listened to the hearing over video through a Pashto interpreter. The prosecutor, John Duran, presented ballistics evidence tying him to the killings and pointed to earlier reports of violence in his household. His public defender, Megan Mitsunaga, argued that he had no criminal record, was not a flight risk and had come to every hearing in his earlier cases, and asked that he be released under GPS monitoring. The judge said he found it hard to give weight to a pretrial risk assessment that had recommended release. Members of the Muslim community, Religion News Service reported, had worked with law enforcement to keep Syed jailed; Assed said that without knowing the motive, the community could not tell whether others had been marked as targets.
A grand jury then indicted Syed on three counts of first-degree murder, adding the death of Naeem Hussain, and four counts of tampering with evidence. The Albuquerque Journal dated the indictment August 19, 2022; the AP reported it on August 22. Federal court filings, the AP reported, cited cellphone records in the case. Syed pleaded not guilty in late August.
One of his sons was charged separately in federal court with giving a false address, in Florida, when he bought guns in 2021. A federal magistrate judge ordered him held, and federal prosecutors said he may have helped his father track Naeem Hussain before the shooting. He was not charged in any of the killings, and his lawyer called the allegations "thin and speculative." In November 2022 the AP and the Albuquerque Journal reported that he had agreed to plead guilty to the gun charge in return for a sentence of time already served and three years of supervised release.
The case moved slowly. A year after the killings no trial date had been set. KUNM, the public radio station of the University of New Mexico, spoke in August 2023 to Muhammad Afzaal Hussain's older brother, who said the anniversary had sharpened his grief and that he still did not know why his brother had died. He said his brother had no relationship with Syed, was not a religious leader and had little in common with the other men who were killed. The police department said it could not comment beyond the criminal complaint, which stated no motive. Each killing was to be tried separately. The pretrial hearings were held before Second Judicial District Judge Britt Baca, named in a 2023 KUNM report as Britt Baca-Miller, and the first trial was for the death of Aftab Hussein.
Opening statements were given on March 12, 2024. Syed was 53. Deputy District Attorney David Waymire told the jury the killing was "willful and very deliberate." The state's case rested on three things: the rifle, the car and the phone.
A firearms expert testified that the casings and bullets recovered at the scene had been fired from a rifle found in Syed's home. A gun store clerk testified that Syed had bought the rifle and picked it up about a week and a half before the shooting, according to the later summary of the New Mexico Supreme Court. Two shell casings were found in his car. Cellphone records placed his phone near the scene about 20 minutes before the shooting and showed it moving back toward his home afterward. Prosecutors also pointed to a note saved in his phone on the day of the killing; AP reports described it in different ways. They said the license plate and hubcaps on Syed's Volkswagen Jetta had been changed after police released photographs of the car, and that he was stopped while trying to reach Texas.
The defense focused on who had used them. Thomas Clark told jurors that no fingerprints or DNA tied Syed to the shooting, and that other people in the home had access to the rifle, the car and the phone; the defense later said at least four other adults in the household could reach the family's firearms. In closing, Megan Mitsunaga argued that investigators had developed "tunnel vision" and ignored evidence that did not fit their suspect. Jordan Machin, for the state, told the jury that Aftab Hussein never had a chance.
Some evidence never reached the jury. Before trial the judge barred prosecutors from directly introducing statements Syed had made to a detective, after the defense argued that his rights had been violated because the detective, speaking through an interpreter, had not properly told him of his right to a court-appointed lawyer. Prosecutors were also barred from presenting evidence about his background in Afghanistan, Waymire later said. The defense called no witnesses. When the judge asked whether he would testify, Syed fought back tears and answered in Pashto that he would remain silent.
On March 18, 2024, after a trial of about a week, the jury found him guilty of first-degree murder. Prosecutors said they were pleased that jurors had found the killing deliberate. They also said that nothing in the testimony or the court filings had pointed to a motive. "We were not able to uncover anything that we would indicate would be a motive that would explain this," Waymire said, and he suggested the case might involve a serial killer whose reasons were "known only to them." Muhammad Afzaal Hussain's older brother attended the verdict and said his family was troubled that no reason had been given. The defense said it would appeal once the other cases were finished.
The second trial, for the death of Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, was due to begin in late August 2024. On the eve of it the lawyers told the court they had reached a plea agreement on the two remaining murder counts, and the trial was canceled. On September 3, 2024, before Judge Baca, Syed pleaded no contest to two counts of second-degree murder, for the deaths of Muhammad Afzaal Hussain and Naeem Hussain. Under the agreement with the Second Judicial District Attorney's Office, each count carried 15 years, 30 in all, to run at the same time as the sentence for the first-degree murder conviction, and the four tampering counts were dropped. Syed spoke through a Pashto interpreter connected online, said little, and asked the judge for a decision that was "just and fair."
Muhammad Afzaal Hussain's older brother told the Albuquerque Journal that he did not regret losing the chance of a trial for his brother's death. Prosecutors had asked for his view; he had asked whether a trial would bring out a motive and had been told that Syed could stay silent. He told KUNM that he accepted that the plea left no route of appeal, that he was glad "a dangerous person is behind bars," and that he thanked the police and prosecutors. His only disappointment, he said, was still not knowing why. He had started a nonprofit in his brother's name to build a school for poor children in Pakistan. Clark, for the defense, said, "There's never going to be an explanation."
On November 8, 2024, at an hour-long hearing in the Bernalillo County courthouse in downtown Albuquerque, Judge Baca sentenced Syed to life in prison, with at least 30 years to serve before he becomes eligible for parole. Speaking through an interpreter, Syed again denied the killings. "Your honor, I did nothing wrong," he told the court, saying the evidence was not clear, and he asked to be allowed to go back to Afghanistan with his wife and children.
Naeem Hussain's brothers spoke for the family. One said the sentence brought some comfort. His oldest brother said Syed had never admitted guilt or given any reason for what he had done. A friend of both Naeem Hussain and Aftab Hussein told the court that Syed could no longer harm anyone. The Albuquerque Journal reported that the families were disappointed that he had taken no responsibility but relieved by the sentence.
Syed appealed the first-degree murder conviction to the New Mexico Supreme Court. He argued that the evidence was not enough to prove that he was the person who fired the rifle or that he had acted with deliberate intent to kill, and that the trial court should have directed a verdict in his favor.
On May 7, 2026, the court unanimously affirmed the conviction in State v. Syed, in an opinion written by Justice Michael E. Vigil. The court noted that "the substantial evidence needed for a conviction can be direct or circumstantial." It pointed to the gun store clerk's testimony, the bullets and casings matched to the rifle found in Syed's home, the two casings in his car and the phone data, and concluded that the state had shown Syed "was more closely connected to the car, rifle, and phone used in the murder than anyone else." The jury, the court held, could reasonably infer deliberate intent from the way the shooting was carried out, including the weapon used. Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who had been the county's district attorney at the time of the arrest, said the decision confirmed the strength of the trial evidence and brought justice for Aftab Hussein's loved ones. His office's release noted that investigators had linked Syed to a gray Volkswagen Jetta seen near the scene, and that the evidence showed efforts to alter the car after police released photographs connected to the case.
The appeal concerned the first-degree murder conviction; the brother of Muhammad Afzaal Hussain had been told in 2024 that the plea agreement left no route of appeal.
No motive was established in court. Police said at the time of the arrest that the killings may have grown out of interpersonal conflict, and declined to say whether a sectarian dispute played a part; prosecutors said after the trial that they had found nothing to explain the killings. A Reuters report printed in Pakistan's Business Recorder noted that some national Muslim groups and some media had linked the killings to sectarian violence, while police and Albuquerque's Islamic community had pointed to personal feuds. One of Naeem Hussain's brothers said at the sentencing that he believed the killings were driven by hatred of the Muslim community; the court made no finding on motive.
The November 2021 killing stands apart from the convictions. Police named Syed the main suspect in the shooting death of a 62-year-old man from Afghanistan in Albuquerque that month, and said in August 2022 that they would not rush to charge him while he was jailed and posed no threat. Through his trial, pleas and appeal, no charge was filed in that case, and it is not among his convictions.
Accounts of where the three men came from also differ. Police and the AP described all three as from Pakistan. Dawn, in its first report on August 7, 2022, described both Aftab Hussein and Naeem Hussain as Afghan refugees who had lived in Peshawar.
1990: Syed graduates from a high school in western Kabul, according to the AP.
2010 to 2012: works as a cook for a construction company in Afghanistan.
December 2012: leaves Afghanistan with his family for Pakistan.
2016: admitted to the United States as a refugee; settles in Albuquerque.
Before 2022: arrested on battery allegations and in a traffic case; all the cases are dismissed.
November 2021: a 62-year-old man is shot dead in Albuquerque; police later name Syed the main suspect, but no charge is filed.
July 26, 2022: Aftab Hussein, 41, is shot dead in Albuquerque.
August 1, 2022: Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, 27, is shot dead in Albuquerque.
August 5, 2022: Naeem Hussain, 25, is shot dead in Albuquerque after attending funeral services for the earlier victims.
August 8 or 9, 2022: Syed is arrested near Santa Rosa, New Mexico; charged with two murders.
August 17, 2022: Judge Joseph Montaño orders him held without bond until trial.
August 19 or 22, 2022: grand jury indicts him on three counts of first-degree murder and four counts of tampering with evidence.
November 2022: one of his sons agrees to plead guilty to a federal false-address gun charge.
March 12, 2024: trial for the death of Aftab Hussein opens.
March 18, 2024: jury convicts him of first-degree murder.
August 2024: plea agreement reached; second trial canceled.
September 3, 2024: pleads no contest to two counts of second-degree murder.
November 8, 2024: Judge Britt Baca sentences him to life with at least 30 years before parole eligibility.
May 7, 2026: New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously affirms the first-degree murder conviction.