"Beat & Release": Turkish "Bully" Stabs Imam in Paterson NJ, Also Known as "Turkish Town"

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Hürriyet Newspaper, 12 April 2023)

Hoping to star in "Zorba the Paterson Turk", as sequel to...

Sayed El-Nakib (65), the imam at Ömer Mosque in Paterson, New Jersey, 

in the USA was stabbed in the back as he said prayers at the mosque on 

the morning of Sunday, 9 April.  The attacker was caught by other 

congregation members and identified as Şerif Zorba (32, whose surname 

means "bully" !).

Imam El-Nakib sustained two stab wounds in his lungs and is receiving

treatment at a hospital.  Assailant Zorba came to the USA recently and

appeared at a hearing the day before yesterday via video link, and with

a translator, from the jail where he is being held.  Zorba rejected the 

charge of  "attempted murder".  

Local press in Paterson reported that Zorba had been attending the 

Mevlana Mosque, rather than the Ömer Mosque, since the beginning

of the holy month of Ramazan a couple of weeks ago.  Hasan Ören,

the imam at Mevlan Mosque, stated that "he'd been coming to our 

mosque for 15 days and seemed normal. He would just pray and leave."

Paterson has a Moslem population of 30,000 out of 150,000 and is 

known by the nickname "Turkish town".  The prosecutor handling

Zorba's case is Bülent Can, also a Turk, and he said that Zorba could

get up to 26 years in prison.  Another Turk, İbrahim Bayçora, was

appointed as the Paterson police chief in February 2020 but he was

relieved of duty in September 2022 by the mayor because of a 

sharp increase in crimes in the city and accusations that he fell asleep

at meetings (!).