Leaders at a Norwood-area mosque say their landlord is not only verbally threatening and harassing them, but also using them as a scapegoat for $9,000 worth of repair work that they say they had nothing to do with.

Last Friday, the leaders of the North Bronx Islamic Center filed a harassment complaint with police because they feared their landlord, Robert Gocjaj, might try to do them harm.

Earlier that day, mosque leaders said they initially called police because Gocjaj had, without notice, locked them out of their basement mosque space at 3156 Perry Ave., which they have leased for the past 13 years. Police arrived shortly afterward and told Gocjaj they would not file charges against him if he switched the locks back, according to mosque leaders.

Gocjaj changed the locks back and left the apartment complex, but returned after police had left, mosque members said. The mosque leaders – fearful of retaliation because, they said, earlier in the day Gocjaj had threatened the mosque’s president with physical violence – decided to file harassment charges with the 52nd Precinct.

Gocjaj has not returned repeated phone calls requesting comment. He was not in his office when the Norwood News tried to contact him in person.

For years, mosque leaders said, they had enjoyed a collegial relationship with Gocjaj’s father David Gocjaj. But since the younger Gocjaj took over the family business a couple of years ago, they said they’ve had repeated smaller disagreements with him.

“His father was great, very respectful,” said Syed Jamin Ali, the mosque’s president and a local landlord himself. “But the son, he is nothing like that. He has no respect.”

This latest episode appears to have brought the situation to a head.

On Feb. 15, a note was posted from Con Ed on the entrance doors to 3156 and 3158 Perry Ave., two adjoined buildings located across from Whalen Park, owned and managed by Gocjaj. It said that “somebody” had turned off the building’s gas. The gas valve is located in the basement where the mosque is. No further information from the landlord was provided.

Without gas for their stoves, tenants in the 50 apartments above the mosque began asking their landlord what happened. Several tenants, all of whom wished not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said the landlord told them the same thing: It was the people from the mosque who turned it off.

All of the tenants the Norwood News spoke with expressed disbelief, saying they believed Gocjaj was blaming the mosque to get its members to pay for the needed repairs.  

“He finds in us an easy target,” said Mohammed I. Hussain, the mosque’s secretary who owns a convenience store down the street from the building.  

Jamin Ali, Hussain and a handful of other mosque leaders said they had no idea they even had a gas valve in their mosque and wouldn’t know how to turn it off in the first place.

“Why would we want to do something like that? We’ve been here for 13 years,” Hussain said.

At around 4 p.m. that Friday, Gocjaj called Hussain to say somebody at the mosque had turned off the gas about 1 p.m., during one of the mosque’s regular prayer times. They also pray early in the morning, at 5 a.m., in the early evening, at about 5:45 p.m., and then again later at night.

But at least one tenant reported that the gas stopped working much earlier than that, at about 10:30 a.m. when she was cooking breakfast.

Hussain told Gocjaj that it wasn’t them.

For the next two weeks, tenants suffered without the use of their stoves and heard nothing from their landlord. He told them he was doing the best he could, but that it could take weeks if not months to fix the problem. The exact time line is unclear, but tenants say at some point a plumber came to inspect the gas line and said there was a leak that would take time to fix.

By last Friday, Feb. 29, the repairs were made and the gas was back on. Tenants were prepared to sue, they said, if it had taken any longer.

That day, before the lock-changing incident with police, Gocjaj called Hussain, Jamin Ali and another mosque leader into his office. According to Hussain and Jamin Ali, Gocjaj showed them a sheet of paper with two handwritten bills with little description, one for $3,500 and another for $4,500, a total of $9,000. He wanted them to pay that amount, but would not let them even handle the copy, according to the mosque leaders.

When Jamin Ali told him he would not pay anything without an official, itemized bill detailing exactly what the charges were for, Hussain and Jamin Ali said Gocjaj became irate, cursing and literally shoving Jamin Ali out the door. Jamin Ali said Gocjaj called him names and told him he would blow his head off.

“I was friendly with [Gocjaj],” said Hussain, who corroborated Jamin Ali’s story, “so he thought he could push them around.”  

Later, after the lock-changing incident, Jamin Ali said he called the police when Gocjaj returned because he thought the landlord might have brought a gun back with him because of the earlier threat.

Jamin Ali said he doesn’t fear for his life, but doesn’t know what to expect from Gocjaj so he is continuing to press charges. Outside of the building on Monday afternoon, he wondered if Gocjaj might be willing to sell it to him.