MURDER IN MOSQUE

Moments after prayers for Ramadan ended in a mosque at California in Couva yesterday, a gunman walked inside and gunned down 57-year-old businessman Haniff Mohammed as he was mingling with fellow Muslims.

Eyewitnesses said that on seeing the gunman, Mohammed ran up a flight of stairs and into a prayer room of the Junon Street West masjid where the gunman killed him at about 1.30 pm. Many worshipers had already left and no one else was injured.

Mohammed lived at Roystonia in Couva and operated a car rental business.

Referring to Mohammed as his Islamic brother and friend, Azard Allaham, told reporters that he heard of the killing after attending Jummah at a mosque in Chaguanas. He immediately went to the scene at which his son Ishmael Allaham held the sermon yesterday in the absence of the resident imam, Clyde Ali.

As he waited for the body to be removed from the mosque, Allaham said, “In Islam, it is good that he died in this month. Allah says you have to die one day, somehow.

"Some people have different concepts, but you can die anywhere. Once your time reaches to die, you have to die.”

The holy month Ramadan began in TT on May 5 and ends June 4.

When asked about the circumstances in which Mohammed died, Allaham said: “It is a disrespect to a point. Allah knows best. He was a very good friend and was a very good guy to me and my family.”

Mohammed is the second person to be killed inside a mosque in the past four years. Daniel Bostic was entering the Jama Masjid on Mucurapo Street, San Fernando, to pray on July 1, 2015, when a man walked up behind him and shot him at the back of his head. The call to prayer had just been made.

Speaking to Newsday yesterday, Imam Atif Majeed Sulaimani of the ASJA mosque at Mucurapo Street, said killing someone was considered one of the major sins in Islam. He said the perpetrators of such crimes, especially in places of worship, must not be allowed to walk free to take lives wherever and however they wished.

“This is very sad and shows how people have become so low, they are worse than animals. They are not hesitating to take life inside a mosque, inside a blessed place. This is not only happening here it is happening everywhere in the world, but it recently started here in this country,” the imam said.

Places of worship must be protected and secured, Sulaimani said. He quoted from the holy Quran saying killing one person was like killing the whole of mankind and saving one life, was like saving the whole of mankind.

Sulaimani said he did not know Mohammed personally but might have seen him at the mosque, having attended prayer service there last year.

“We remember him in our duas and we make duas for the person who did this heinous crime. We hope that justice prevails. There should be justice also for the one killed at San Fernando mosque and all innocent people killed.”

When asked if the congregation have become fearful of being killed during prayers, he replied that like any human, they wanted to secure their lives.

“We believe in God and we believe our lives are in the control of Almighty God. If a death has to come in the mosques, in our homes, it has to come. This type of fear is always in the mind and hearts of the people.

“At the end of the day, those who believe in God and whose faith is strong, they try to get over these types of fear with the help of God.”

Sulaimani said he wanted to “confirm” that despite the namesake, the deceased businessman was not the owner of Haniff Mohammed and Sons, a construction company.

Police said the man had a criminal record and the matters against him had been completed.

Residents described him as a “sweet man” who had a love for women.

He was the father of more than seven children, according to residents. They said they heard two gunshots and remained indoors as they waited for police to come. Residents claimed they did not see anything.

“I heard he had changed his life. He was always in that mosque on Fridays for Jummah. He normally takes his mother there but today he did not bring her.”

Relatives at the scene declined to speak to the media.

Police from Couva as well as from the Homicide Bureau Region III searched the area for the killer.