WHAT A HEEL: Ex-Con Turned Imam Arrested For Bringing Box Cutter Blades Into Prison
The X-ray machine at the entrance of the Manhattan Detention Complex - in the vicinity of where the World Trade Center stood until September 11, 2001 – revealed that Imam Zulqarnain Abu-Shahid, 58, had a pair of scissors and three metal box cutter blades in the outer flap of his shoulder bag.
After his arrest on several counts of promoting prison contraband, further investigation revealed that Abu-Shahid – a NYC Department of Correction chaplain – was one of four men convicted of the murder of a customer during the armed robbery of a Finast supermarket in Harlem in December 1976, reports The New York Times:
James M. McQueeney, the chaplain’s lawyer, said that his client did not know the blades were in the bag when he entered the jail. …
As for the chaplain’s past, Mr. McQueeney said, “He has completely reformed his life” and lives with his wife and two children on Staten Island.
Officials with the city’s Department of Correction said that the chaplain, who joined the department in February 2007 and earns $49,471 a year, was immediately suspended without pay.
“Additional steps, up to and including dismissal, will be pursued consistent with the findings of the Department of Investigation,” Dora Schriro, the commissioner of the Correction Department, said in a statement.
Stephen J. Morello, a Correction Department spokesman, later added that in light of the chaplain’s criminal background, Ms. Schriro “has directed a full review of the circumstances of his hiring.”
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