Shuaib Abdur Raheem

Shuaib Abdur Raheem was the eldest of the four young Sunni Muslim men known as the Williamsburg Four. On January 18, 1973 — the same day members of the Nation of Islam murdered seven Sunni Muslims, including children, in the Washington, D.C. home of Hamaas Abdul Khaalis (the Hanafi Massacre) — he led Dawud Abdur Rahman, Yusuf A. Mussadiq, and Salih Ali Abdullah into John and Als Sporting Goods at Broadway and Melrose Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn, intending to acquire weapons to defend Sunni Muslim communities in New York from anticipated attack. A patron alerted the NYPD; the four attempted to surrender almost immediately but were fired on at the back door and forced back inside. The forty-eight-hour police siege that followed killed NYPD Officer Stephen Gilroy, who the defense and witnesses inside the store later confirmed had been shot by NYPD gunfire, not by the defendants.

The four were convicted in June 1974 of Officer Gilroys murder and sentenced to twenty-five years to life. Shuaib was granted parole in 2007 after serving 32 years; the parole grant was rescinded after a campaign by the NYPD and its supporters. He was finally released on parole on July 2, 2010, after 35 years in New York state prison.

The 2021 documentary Hold Your Fire revisits the 1973 Brooklyn hostage siege and the development of police crisis negotiation. Its press biography identifies Shu’aib Raheem as a trauma-support consultant, former coordinator of the Brownsville Arches Transformative Mentoring Program for justice-involved children and families, and founder of the Jawala Scouts Leadership Training Program. It credits him with a master’s degree in pastoral counseling from New York Theological Seminary and service on the Fortune Society board at the time of the film. These are post-prison activities; the press kit supplies no new custody dates. Source: https://www.filmplatform.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/HOLD-YOUR-FIRE-Press-Notes.pdf#page=5