Boy’s Uncle a Suspect in Grisly Case

The uncle of an 11-year-old boy whose body was dismembered and thrown into a trash dumpster in Hacienda Heights was named by Los Angeles sheriff’s homicide detectives Friday as a prime suspect in the murder.

Sheriff’s deputies said they are seeking an arrest warrant for Sattar Ahmad, 27, who disappeared the day after the discovery of the mutilated body of his nephew, Raheed Parwez, a seventh-grader at Mesa Robles Junior High School.

The decision to arrest Ahmad was made after a search of his recently rented apartment in a fashionable Hacienda Heights complex where the body of Raheed Parwez was discovered Tuesday, about a mile from the boy’s home.

“Detectives are not revealing the nature of the evidence that was found during the search, but they now believe that it is probable that the victim was killed inside the apartment and later dumped in a trash container at the apartment complex,” a sheriff’s spokesman said.

According to witnesses, Raheed Parwez was seen getting into a car moments after he was dropped off at his school by a neighbor early Monday morning. Ahmad reportedly told sheriff’s deputies that he had dropped the boy off at school that morning, then disappeared after his initial questioning.

Sources close to the family of the murder victim, who was strangled before his body was dismembered, said Friday that Ahmad, the brother of the boy’s father, Dr. Khalid Parwez, initially moved in with the Parwez family at a house near the apartment complex shortly after moving to California from Pakistan about a month ago.

Parwez and his former wife, Amtul Karim Parwez, who were divorced last year, were engaged in a bitter custody fight over their two children, the murdered boy and his 7-year-old brother, Nabeel, who has been placed in protective custody by the Sheriff’s Department as a key witness in the case.

“So far we have only named Sattar Ahmad as a suspect, but we don’t know if anybody else is under suspicion,” a sheriff’s officer said. “Obviously the investigation is continuing.”

As homicide detectives continued the search for Ahmad, who is described as 5-feet-6 and 140 pounds with black hair and dark brown eyes, the murder victim’s father unsuccessfully sought Friday to win the immediate release of his 7-year-old son. A hearing was set for Wednesday to determine if the boy should be released.

Attorney Leslie Abramson, representing Parwez in his efforts to have his son released to him, Friday disputed statements by relatives of Amtul Karim Parwez implying that her client was fearful he might lose custody of his sons to his former wife because of a psychiatric report allegedly refuting earlier findings that she has mental problems.

“Nobody believed there was going to be a change in custody, last of all the father,” Abramson said. She added that Parwez, a gynecologist at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in West Los Angeles, was working a 24-hour shift at the hospital from Monday morning, when his son vanished, until Tuesday morning, shortly before his body was found.

Parwez had charged in court papers that his former wife had “revelations from God” that her two sons would be “drowned in a gutter” and that she could not help them because “this was a divine punishment for the children because they continued to live with me.”

The doctor also said his former wife had a revelation that he would also be killed.

The missing uncle had become a close friend of Amtul Karim Parwez in recent weeks, according to lawyers on both sides of the case. Attorney Phillip Kelly, representing Parwez’s former wife in the custody fight, expressed surprise that Sattar Ahmad was a suspect.

“As far I have been able to learn, he adored both those boys,” Kelly said. “Mrs. Parwez was fond of him, and he was fond of her. But to make something out of that is preposterous. She’s a very caring person. If she was such a monster, why was Dr. Parwez trying so hard at various times for a reconciliation?”