U.S. landlord kills Palestinian-American boy in Illinois prison

An Illinois landlord was convicted of murder in a violent hate crime for his six-year-old Palestinian American.

Joseph Czuba was sentenced to 53 years in prison for murdering Wadea al-Fayoume and his mother Hanaan Shaheen in 2023.

Police said the landlord targeted the two people’s Islamic beliefs shortly after the Israeli-Gaza war began. He died Thursday at the Illinois Department of Corrections, according to the Will County Sheriff’s Office.

Czuba was sentenced to less than three months in a decade when he died at the age of 73 in an unknown career.

The family had been renting a house from Czuba, Plainfield, about 40 miles (64 km) from Chicago when the attack occurred. Police said Kubai stabbed Al Faum 26 times. The boy later died in the hospital.

Kuba was convicted of two counts of hate crimes, one count of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault.

According to Reuters, his mother testified in court that Kubai also attacked her with a knife before saying to her son: “As a Muslim, you must die.”

She did not attend her son’s funeral because she was recovering from the hospital injured in the attack.

Some of the crime scene videos displayed during the trial were so clear that the judge agreed not to show them to the audience. Al-Fayoume’s family was in the crowd.

Jurors spent less than 90 minutes returning to a case and gained attention throughout the United States and renewed concerns about anti-Muslim and anti-Palestine discrimination.

Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago office of the U.S. Council on Islamic Rehab said in a statement following Czuba’s death that although “this depraved killer has died, hatred is still alive, good.”

In June, the al-fayoume memorial was unveiled at a playground in Plainfield. The city is home to a large and mature Palestinian community.