Ahmed Osman was born in Elazığ in the Ottoman Empire (now Türkiye) on December 27, 1896. He had black hair, brown eyes, and stood 5'3". Mr. Osman left Türkiye at 15 and arrived in Havre, France, from where he voyaged to the United States on the SS La Lorraine. He arrived in New York on July 3, 1911, and eventually settled in Norwood, Massachusetts, where he lived on Washington Street and worked as a leather merchant at a tannery. Mr. Osman became a naturalized U.S. citizen on February 18, 1927, and married a woman named Edith while living in Norwood.
Mr. Osman was incarcerated in the Massachusetts State Prison. Authorities executed him by electrocution there on January 23, 1934, at 37. Mr. Osman was the first Muslim man to receive the death penalty in Massachusetts.