By Sadef Ali Kully
A Rego Park man who allegedly stabbed a Muslim man in Flushing in 2012 was sentenced Tuesday to three years of supervised release and six months of home confinement for sending death threats to an employee of an Islamic advocacy group in Washington, the Brooklyn U.S. attorney said.
A condition of release is that Bernard Laufer , 58, of Rego Park must participate in a mental health treatment program, according to Kelly Currie, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District.
Laufer pleaded guilty March 2 in Brooklyn federal court to sending threatening communications from New York to Executive Director Nihad Awad of the Council on American Islamic Relations, a civil rights and advocacy group with offices nationwide.
According to federal records filed with the court and statements made during the guilty plea hearing, Laufer admitted he sent emails to Awad in June 2014 threatening to mutilate and kill him. At the time of his guilty plea, Laufer faced a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.
Laufer had already spent about 13 months in federal custody since his arrest on attempted murder charges and did get a sentence based on time served, according to Currie.
“I believe it is a light sentence. It is sending the wrong message to the Muslim community and it is not going to be a deterrent,” Awad said. “He has the ability to try to kill someone – this individual is a danger to any community.”
He added, “In light of what we saw in Charleston, these threats have to be taken even more seriously, especially in African-American and Muslim communities.”
Laufer is still facing attempted murder charges as a hate crime in Queens Criminal Court for the alleged 2012 stabbing of a Muslim imam from Masjid Al-Saliheen, a mosque located at Kissena Boulevard in Kew Gardens Hills according to court records.
The stabbing case has not yet gone to trial and Laufer was released on $200,000 bail, according to Queens Criminal Court records.
Laufer’s attorney, Alexander Eisemann, said Laufner suffered from mental illness, according to federal court transcripts, and he was looking to have his client admitted to a psychiatric institution.
Eisemann said Laufer has an extensive history of what he called mental defects and he anticipates some type of mental defect defense for his client in the Queens case.
Reach Reporter Sadef Ali Kully by e-mail at skull
