PA NABBED IN SLAY Ex-Olympic boxer tracked to Kuwait after year on run
A former Olympic boxer on the run for a year after the death of his daughter, a Staten Island Muslim activist, has been tracked to Kuwait and charged with killing her, authorities and sources said Sunday.
Kabary Salem, 52, was extradited from Kuwait on Friday after a yearlong manhunt following the death of his 25-year-old daughter, Ola Salem, officials said.
Ola’s dead body was found dumped, fully clothed and with drag marks nearby, inside Bloomingdale Park on Staten Island just after 9 a.m. on Oct. 24, 2019. She had been strangled, sources said.
Salem fled the country shortly after his daughter’s death, possibly spending time in Egypt, and was eventually tracked down hiding in
Kuwait, officials said.
Salem apparently tried to throw the scent off his trail when he gave an interview with The New York Times following his daughter’s death. Salem claimed his daughter complained of being tailed by another vehicle on the highway.
“She always said somebody would follow her,” he told the Times.
“I want to know what happened to her, what is the reason for that — but no one tells me — I am just waiting,” he added. “She was a really good, beautiful girl.”
Salem was arrested Dec. 3 by the NYPD’s Regional Fugitive Task Force and was extradited Friday. A Staten Island grand jury indicted Salem on Nov. 3, and he is set to be arraigned, law enforcement officials said.
He is being held Island. at Rikers
Salem was Egypt’s top boxer and competed in the 1992 and 1996 Olympics.
He is known as “one of the dirtiest fighters of all time,” according to Wikipedia, infamous for his illegal head butts that killed Randie Carver in a 1999 match.
An activist and boxer herself, Ola dedicated her life to championing women’s rights within the Muslim faith and worked at the Arab American Center as well as with Muslim victims of domestic abuse at the Asiyah Women’s Center in Brooklyn.
Members of her faith community recalled how Ola had come to the women’s center seeking protection from her abusive husband, but quickly found a role as mentor helping others in distress.
“She came to us with her problems, but when she saw the other women she took the active role as volunteer, really connecting with them,” Mohamed Bahe, 35, co-founder and director of the Muslim Community Center, the parent organization of the Asiyah Women’s Center, told the Daily News after Salem’s death.
“She knew what they were going through and tried to help them, even driving them to appointments ... she was a very lovely person.”
A fund-raiser in Ola’s memory has raised more than $16,700 for Muslim victims of domestic abuse.