US man sentenced to 53 years for the murder of a Palestinian American child

The death of six-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi, a Palestinian American, has shone a light on instances of anti-Arab hate.

A United States man has been sentenced to 53 years in prison for the fatal stabbing of a six-year-old Palestinian American boy, after being found guilty of hate crime charges and murder.

Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak announced the sentence on Friday in the case of 73-year-old Illinois landlord Joseph Czuba.

On October 14, 2023, just days after the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, Czuba attacked two of his tenants, Hanan Shaheen and her young son Wadee Alfayoumi.

Police say Czuba arrived at their door angry about the war and proceeded to force his way inside, strangling Shaheen and holding her down before pulling out a military-style knife.

Shaheen suffered more than a dozen stab wounds before escaping to a bathroom to call 911 for help. Alfayoumi, meanwhile, was stabbed 26 times. He did not survive.

Czuba’s trial featured audio from Shaheen’s panicked 911 call, as well as testimony from the mother herself. Speaking from the witness stand in English and Arabic, she described Czuba becoming increasingly paranoid and Islamophobic as the war progressed.

For nearly two years before the attack, the family had rented a pair of bedrooms in Czuba’s house in Plainville, Illinois, just outside of Chicago.

But after the war began on October 7, Shaheen recalled Czuba telling her to move out of her lodgings because Muslims were not welcome.

Then, during the attack, she once again heard him citing her Muslim faith. “He told me ‘You, as a Muslim, must die,’” said Shaheen.

The incident was one of the highest-profile acts of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim violence in the US after the war in Gaza broke out.

But advocates say it is part of a trend of anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic hate that has swept the country in recent months.

Wadee Alfayoumi’s father, Oday Alfayoume, and his uncle, Mahmoud Yousef, attend a vigil on October 17, 2023 [Nam Y Huh/AP Photo]

After the attack, police found Czuba sitting on the ground outside of the home, his hands and body bloody. Czuba pleaded not guilty, and his defence team has sought to vacate his conviction on the grounds that the prosecution played to the jury’s emotions.

Some of the images of the crime scene were so graphic that the judge ordered the court’s television screens to be turned away from the audience. Jury members heard Shaheen telling 911 operators in fear, “The landlord is killing me and my baby!”

During his opening statements, Michael Fitzgerald, the assistant state’s attorney for Will County, described Alfayoumi’s final moments as full of horror.

“He could not escape,” Fitzgerald said. “If it wasn’t enough that this defendant killed that little boy, he left the knife in the little boy’s body.”

In February, the jury took less than 90 minutes to return a guilty verdict.

On Friday, Judge Bertani-Tomczak rejected the defence’s bid to overturn the conviction. In announcing the sentence, she called Czuba’s actions “brutal” and “heinous”.

She said a 30-year prison sentence was given for Alfayoumi’s murder, plus another 20 years for the attack on his mother and three years for committing a hate crime.

Hela Yousef, second from left, prays for her slain cousin, six-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi, outside the Will County Courthouse on February 28 [Nam Y Huh/AP Photo]

Alfayoumi’s great-uncle, Mahmoud Yousef, was the only family member to speak at the sentencing hearing. He said no amount of prison time could ever make up for the loss his family has suffered.

He also explained that Alfayoumi had seen Czuba as a grandfather figure, and he questioned what “fake news” about the war in Gaza could have prompted such violence.

“Some people are bringing this war to this country,” Yousef said. “We cannot do that. We can’t bring the war here. We cannot bring hatred to this country.”

In March, the Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a report saying it had received 8,658 complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab incidents in the last year alone, a 7.6 percent rise.

It was the highest tally the group had recorded since it began collecting data in 1996.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies