Grandfather: Remains are missing boy
mother in December in Jonesboro, Georgia, near Atlanta.
The search for him led authorities to New Mexico, where 11 hungry children and a youngster’s remains were found in recent days at a filthy compound shielded by old tires, wooden pallets and an earthen wall studded with broken glass.
The missing boy’s grandfather, Siraj Wahhaj, a Muslim cleric who leads a well-known New York City mosque, told reporters he had learned from other family members that the remains were his grandson’s.
The imam said he did not know the cause of death.
“Whoever is responsible, then that person should be held accountable,” Wahhaj said.
A Georgia arrest warrant accused the boy’s father, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, the imam’s son, of kidnapping the child. Authorities said the father at some point told his wife he wanted to perform an exorcism on the boy, who cannot walk, suffers seizures and requires constant attention because of a lack of oxygen and blood flow at birth.
The child’s father was among five adults arrested on suspicion of child abuse in the raid at the compound. In court papers, prosecutors also said Wahhaj had been training children there to carry out school shootings.
Speaking at his Brooklyn mosque, the elder Wahhaj said he had no knowledge of any such training.
“It sounds to me it sounds crazy. But I don’t know,” he said. “I make no judgments yet because we don’t know.”
The imam’s mosque has attracted a number of radicals over the years, including a man who later helped bomb the World Trade Center in 1993.
l grandchildren or members of his family through marriage.