City Council candidate touts endorsement from alleged terrorist plotter in 1993 WTC bombing
Yusef Salaam — one of the exonerated “Central Park Five” defendants now running for a City Council seat in Harlem — is touting an endorsement from an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Imam Siraj Wahhaj, 73, was identified with 170 others by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White as one of the “unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators” in the terrorist attack which killed six people.
Wahhaj later served as a character witness for Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman — the infamous “blind sheikh” who was convicted in 1995 of plotting terrorist attacks in the United States.
While serving as vice president of the Islamic Society of North America, Wahhaj was “accused of urging his followers to overturn the U.S. system of government and set up an Islamic dictatorship,” according to the Department of Justice.
In past remarks, Wahhaj has defended the convicted World Trade Center bomb plotters and disparaged the FBI and CIA as the “real terrorists.”
Salaam, a Democrat and practicing Muslim, is running in a competitive Harlem primary to replace socialist anti-cop Councilwoman Kristin Richardson Jordan.
He prominently features the endorsement from Wahhaj on his campaign website.
“Brother Yusef Salaam has faced extraordinary trials and tribulations and yet he chose to be closer to the people instead of allowing grief to consume him,” the imam is quoted as saying. “I proudly endorse Yusef Salaam to be the next City Council member from the 9th District in Harlem and I encourage everyone to vote for him so that we may rise up together as a community.”
Salaam 49, responded in an Instagram post: “Thank you to @imamsirajwahhajofficial and @official__yama for endorsing my campaign. Incredibly proud of the diverse coalition we are building to bring about the new Harlem Renaissance!”
Salaam’s Instagram also features an image of him embracing controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and another post of a man defecating on an American flag.
“Can’t get much worse than that guy,” said Queens Democratic Councilman Bob Holden of the Wahhaj endorsement. “Anyone who is proud of that endorsement is unfit for public office in New York City or anywhere in the United States.”
While Wahhaj’s website promotes him as a wise elder statesman and religious scholar “rooted in hope, faith, and the power of redemption,” he has family ties to terrorism which have continued.
In 2018, Wahhaj’s son — also named Siraj Wahhaj — was busted in a squalid New Mexico compound where was training young children for “jihad” with firearms and hand-to-hand combat techniques, according to court documents.
“The defendants in this case allegedly were preparing for deadly attacks and their targets included law enforcement and military personnel,” said Michael McGarrity, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division at the time.
A trial is scheduled for September.
Wahhaj has in the past also stated his view on the supremacy of Islamic law over secular laws and has expressed support for traditional Islamic punishments — including stoning adulterers and chopping off the hands of thieves, according to the book “American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion.”
Wahhaj has been a member of the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam since 1969 and in 1991 became the first Muslim to deliver an opening prayer to the United States House of Representatives, according to the Center for Brooklyn History.
He has been the Imam of Al-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn since 1981.
Other contenders in the Harlem race include Assemblywoman Inez Dickens and Assemblyman Al Taylor.
Both Salaam and Wahhaj did not respond to requests for comment from The Post.
Source » nypost
