No Hate Crime Probe After Muslim Family Attacked In Rego Park

UPDATE: The NYPD has opened a hate crime investigation into this attack, and one person has been arrested.

REGO PARK, QUEENS — Officials and advocates are pressing the NYPD to open a hate crime investigation after a Muslim man defending his wife from two harassers was beaten so badly he landed in the hospital.

Rego Park resident Khaled Aly was brutally beaten Friday in front of his wife and children and called a "f—ing Muslim" by a pair of neighbors who had previously harassed the family, according to a news release from the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR-NY.

Yet the NYPD's Hate Crime Task Force determined the attack Friday was not "a bias incident" and instead assigned the case to detectives at the local precinct, the Queens Daily Eagle reported.

CAIR-NY advocates, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer and Queens Borough President-elect Donovan Richards are among those asking police to investigate the attack as a hate crime.

“Hate crimes targeting the Muslim community need to be taken seriously," CAIR-NY Legal Director Ahmed Mohamed said in a statement. "Again and again we are seeing that bias motivated crimes targeting Muslims are being minimized and not properly investigated."

The attacked unfolded as Aly, his wife and their two children, aged 6 and 8, were heading to their home in Rego Park on Friday night.

A man and a woman came up to the family and started harassing Aly's wife, Neamat Taha, for wearing a hijab.

"We are in America," the duo said, according to CAIR-NY, which is representing the family.

After Aly asked them to leave, the man and woman started beating him and cursing at him, calling him a "f—ing Muslim” and threatening to “kill your f—ing family," the news release said.

The attackers fled once NYPD officers arrived.

Aly was rushed to the hospital, where he went into surgery for his injuries, CAIR-NY said. He left the hospital Monday evening.

The family told CAIR-NY they recognized the attackers as two neighbors in their Rego Park apartment complex who had previously harassed them — incidents they had reported to police and building management.

The morning after the attack, as Taha returned from the hospital, one of the attackers confronted her and told her, "I’m going to burn you and burn your family.”

Taha and her family since haven't returned to the building, according to CAIR-NY.

Police told the the Queens Eagle that the attack seemed to be part of an ongoing dispute between neighbors rather than a hate crime.