Al Qaeda Supporter Who Praised Beheadings Taught Quran to Kids in New York

NEW YORK, NY- A convicted al-Qaeda sympathizer who conspired to commit mass killings of Americans at shopping malls was teaching kids at a New York City mosque, according to reports.

Tarek Mehanna, whom prosecutors say once vowed, according to the New York Post, to wage jihad against American citizens both domestically and in foreign countries, began teaching at the Muslim Community Center of Staten Island (MCC) in West Brighton in January. Mehanna taught Arabic and the Quran to children as young as four years old, prosecutors said. They said he also once traveled to the Middle East to train with al-Qaeda. 

In a since-deleted Facebook post, Mohamed Bahi, a former senior advisor to New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the founder of the mosque, announced Mehanna’s hiring and the mosque’s grand opening. Mehanna’s photo was prominently featured, along with headshots of imams and other center officials. 

The Post said Adams had visited the MCC in Brooklyn in the past. 

Authorities say that Mehanna, 43, taught at the center four days a week for four hours per day. 

“I’m all for second chances–but not when it comes to convicted terrorists teaching kids. That’s not rehabilitation–that’s insanity,” City Councilman Frank Morano (R-Staten Island) said. 

Federal prosecutors said that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., inspired Mehanna’s radicalization. Mehanna and several unnamed co-conspirators entered Afghanistan at the Pakistan border in 2002, and “agreed to explore ways in which they too could kill Americans.” 

When U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003, Mehanna and his co-conspirators discussed purchasing automatic guns to murder U.S. citizens inside shopping malls, “but [they] ultimately discussed them as impractical,” prosecutors said. 

They then shifted their focus to killing American military members, whom Mehanna referred to as “infidels,” court records showed. 

“They discussed many options,” reads the government’s 2012 sentencing memorandum, where they asked a judge to lock Mehanna up for life. Instead, they decided in 2004 to “seek training in Yemen, sought guidance on how to obtain it, received contacts, equipped and readied themselves for the journey, and made arrangements to sneak out of Massachusetts.” 

The group spent days going back and forth across Yemen, “braving brigands and once facing down an AK-47,” however, they failed to “find a suitable training camp.” That led Mehanna to return to the United States, “disappointed but no less determined to provide support to America’s enemies.” 

Mehanna, a pharmacist, worked in an unidentified suburb of Boston. Later in 2004, he attended an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, where he received “paramilitary training so that he could eventually join al-Qaeda in Iraq in fighting and killing American soldiers,” prosecutors said. 

Mehanna spent 14 years in the federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, after a 2011 conviction of providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to commit murder, and making false statements to the FBI.” 

Federal officials said Mehanna lied about his Yemeni trip when questioned by federal agents, and later translated jihadist propaganda and distributed it online, along with al-Qaeda recruitment videos. 

Prosecutors further alleged that Mehanna, a close friend of Islamist extremist Daniel Joseph Maldonado, “enjoyed viewing” and was obsessed with footage of the beheadings of numerous Americans, including Pennsylvania contractor Nick Berg, Jew Jersey contractor Paul Johnson, and Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. 

Mehanna used to show the footage during “movie nights” he hosted, prosecutors said. They said Mehanna “idolized” Iraqi terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who killed Berg. 

“He prolifically distributed a video of the mutilation of American soldiers in Iraq, described how one could see the internal organs and ribs, and then said, ‘Texas BBQ is the way to go,’” prosecutors said. 

“This is the role model that kids should be looking up to?” former Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind railed. “This is a role model? Someone desperate to become a terrorist? It’s a model of terrorism. 

“We know what he stands for and what he’s about–what is he teaching these children?” asked Hikind, the founder of Americans Against Antisemitism.

Mehanna, while locked up, posted to a Facebook page calling for his release. The post likened the Muslim world to the human body, while comparing the United States to AIDS. 

“Jihad is its immune system,” he wrote. 

Mehanna also mocked the deaths of Israeli soldiers on Facebook, writing “Poor baby” above videos he shared in both October and November. He also ridiculed US Army soldier Sgt. Quandarius Davon Stanley, 23, who was killed in May 2024 while delivering aid to Gaza on Joe Biden’s failed “floating pier.” 

“Another poor baby,” Mehanna wrote. 

The Post reported that the MCC of Staten Island, affiliated with the MCC in Brooklyn, just filed for non-profit incorporation status with the Department of State’s Division of Corporations on June 5. 

On Saturday, an unnamed official with MCC Brooklyn said Mehanna’s work with the center “ended over a month ago.” 

“He is no longer teaching at our center. WE are a diverse community that believes in second chances and those that want to change themselves through service and education,” he said in an email. 

The center refused to provide further information on why Mehanna was hired in the first place or the events surrounding his departure. They also declined to provide contact information for him. 

“It’s clear he still harbors the same anti-American hatred he held before his sentence,” said City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, a Brooklyn Republican. “The ‘education’ these children are receiving is being administered on American soil and should reflect the values and interests of our nation.” 

“Do any of us really believe that someone who was convicted for colluding with al Qaeda–a terrorist organization that’s committed terrorist acts on American soil and shed American blood–is truly ‘reformed’ and won’t continue to collude with other terrorists, and won’t indoctrinate the children in his care into a radical jihadist ideology?” Vernikov asked.