Biography
Mufid Fawaz Alkhader, a United States citizen born in Iraq and living in Schenectady, New York, was 28 when he fired a Kel-Tec KS7 12-gauge shotgun twice into the air outside Temple Israel in Albany at about 2 p.m. on December 7, 2023, shouting “Free Palestine”. He tried to fire a third round, but the shotgun jammed; he then tried to tear an Israeli flag from a flagpole in front of the building. Adults and children were inside and nobody was hurt, but the synagogue called off the Chanukah concert and candle-lighting ceremony it had planned for that evening, and congregants were afraid to return. He said he had wanted to frighten Zionists. A restraining order already barred him from buying a gun himself, so the shotgun was straw-purchased on his behalf on November 5, 2023.
He was arrested the same day as the shooting and charged by criminal complaint with unlawfully possessing a firearm, being prohibited from having one as an unlawful user of a controlled substance. At his first appearance on December 8, 2023 he was remanded without bail as a flight risk and a danger to the community, and his lawyer subsequently waived the detention hearing, so he has been in continuous federal custody since the day of the offence.
He pleaded guilty on February 4, 2025 to conspiring to straw-purchase a firearm, to obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs with a dangerous weapon, and to brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. On August 12, 2025 Judge Anne M. Nardacci sentenced him to 120 months in federal prison, to be followed by five years of supervised release.
