An alleged Brooklyn bigot arrested for toppling a crucifix at a Bensonhurst church last week has also been charged with torching a Boro Park yeshiva and synagogue.
Ali Alaheri, 29, was arrested Friday in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Arson and Explosives Task Force, and the NYPD Hate Crime Unit.
Alaheri was captured on surveillance video piling garbage bags against the side of a building at 1128 36th Street, the home of Yeshiva Heichal Hatalmud of Boro Park, and setting them on fire shortly after 4 a.m. Wednesday, according to federal court papers. The FDNY quickly put out the flames.
A week earlier, Alaheri allegedly attacked a crucifix and set an American flag on fire at St. Athanasius Church on Bay Parkway at 61st Street, according to the NYPD, who announced his arrest in the incident early Saturday.
Gov. Cuomo had slammed the May 14 incident at St. Athanasius as “an act of hate.”
It’s not clear what inspired Alaheri’s alleged actions.
Surveillance video played a key role in Alaheri’s arrest in both incidents, authorities said. He was allegedly caught on camera lingering around the yeshiva for hours, hopping in and out of a nearby vehicle several times and changing his clothes several times, and at some point, stopped to set the fire, authorities said.
Moments after he left the car for the last time, the camera picked up Alaheri again, “punching a Jewish man multiple times in the head with no provocation or prior interaction,” the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York said in a criminal complaint. The man had been sitting in front of a nearby auto body shop when Alaheri attacked, according to the complaint.
Alaheri then jumped over a fence into an alleyway about two blocks away, stole a bicycle and rode off, according to prosecutors, who said Alaheri’s getaway was caught on surveillance video and in photos taken by a bystander.
Less than an hour later, Alaheri was ticketed by NYPD in Prospect Park for riding a bicycle in the wrong direction along a bike path. He showed the cops two forms of ID: an EBT, or food stamps, card and a state ID, and was videoed by their body cameras.
Alaheri used the EBT card at a store Friday, and was arrested in Dobbs Ferry later in the day. When he was arrested, he still had the stolen bike with him and was wearing the same clothes he was wearing in the various videos. He also had the bike ticket in his pocket.
Separate footage shows a man matching Alaheri’s description outside St. Athanasius, federal court papers said.
That video shows a man wearing a gray sweatshirt and khaki pants, carrying a hammer in his back pocket, and walking toward the church from a block where several 911 callers reported a man trying to steal a bicycle.
The man can be seen setting fire to an American flag near the church, and walking toward a statue of Christ outside the view of the camera.
The statue and a crucifix were found damaged the following morning. “The face of Jesus was on the ground—in the dirt,” Monsignor David Cassato, the pastor of St. Athanasius recalled Saturday.
Cassato wanted to believe the vandalism was a random act. “Who would want to do something like that to someone who helps?” he asked, pointing to the parish’s work providing food and vaccines to the community during the pandemic.
“Pray god” said the priest “he didn’t do it out of hatred, he had to be sick.”
Alaheri was charged with criminal mischief as a hate crime in the church vandalism, the NYPD said.
Additional reporting by Phillip Mahony
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