Testimony reveals evidence of frame-up
Former Black Panther could face execution
By Dianne Mathiowetz
Atlanta
The state of Georgia is expected to finish presenting its
case against Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin on March 4. For two
weeks Fulton County prosecutors have argued that Al-Amin shot a
sheriff and wounded another officer on March 16, 2000.
Al-Amin has declared his innocence. If convicted, he could
face the death sentence.
Supporters of Al-Amin have filled the courtroom each day.
Coretta Scott King issued a statement urging that the
inconsistencies in the state's case be thoroughly examined and
that Al-Amin's presumption of innocence and right to a fair
trial be upheld.
His lawyers assert that police agencies rushed to judgment
that Al-Amin was guilty based on his political views and
religious affiliation. The defense plans to expose the police
investigation as flawed and limited.
Al-Amin has charged the government with conspiracy to frame
him up.
During the turbulent civil rights and Black liberation
movements of the 1960s and 1970s, Jamil Al-Amin--known then as
H. Rap Brown--was one of the most inspiring young leaders of
the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. He was in the
forefront of the struggle to win voting rights and economic and
political power for extraordinarily oppressed Black people in
the South. Brown organized in rural White Hall, Ala., facing
constant death threats from racist elements like the Ku Klux
Klan.
His every move was monitored as part of the infamous
COINTELPRO, a government counter-intelligence program carried
out by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to undermine and destroy
movements for social change.
Al-Amin was uncompromising in his opposition to the Vietnam
War. He called on young Black men to refuse to fight in an
imperialist war and encouraged them instead to battle racism at
home.
Al-Amin recognized that the dramatic infusion of drugs into
the African American community was, like COINTELPRO, an attempt
to immobilize the community, create division and suspicion, and
thus maintain the domination of a racist, corporate elite.
In 1967, Al-Amin was wounded in an assassination attempt in
Cambridge, Md. He was later charged with inciting a riot in an
incident caused by police brutality. After two of his
associates in SNCC were murdered in a car bombing in Cambridge
in 1970, Al-Amin went underground. Placed on the FBI's "most
wanted" list, he successfully eluded capture for 17 months
before being arrested in New York City. He was charged with
attempted robbery and sentenced to prison.
While in prison, he converted to Islam and changed his name
to Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.
Nothing to pin on him
Following his release, Al-Amin moved to Atlanta in 1976.
There he opened a community store and established a mosque in
the West End neighborhood. He continued his campaign against
drugs, organized neighborhood patrols and initiated youth
programs.
Al-Amin was a thorn in the side of the drug and prostitution
kingpins, slum landlords and corrupt and brutal cops.
He was recognized in the Muslim religious community and
served as a national and international clerical leader. He is
an influential voice for Islam whose leadership and record of
community service appealed to a broad range of people.
Over the last 20 years, federal and local police agencies
have maintained their surveillance of Al-Amin, going so far as
to pay informants to infiltrate his mosque to try to entrap him
in some illegal activity.
They have investigated him for a wide range of crimes,
including gunrunning and murder. All these efforts failed to
find any evidence of wrongdoing.
Then, on the night of March 16, 2000, two Fulton County
sheriffs were sent to arrest Al-Amin for failure to appear in a
suburban Cobb County court on one-year-old charges stemming
from a traffic stop.
Sheriff Ricky Kinchen was mortally wounded and Aldranon
English severely injured in a shoot-out in front of Al-Amin's
store.
Revelations from
the witness stand
Court testimony reveals that Sheriff English has given four
sworn accounts of the episode, each varying dramatically in
details as to the location and description of the assailant. In
all versions, however, he said the man who shot him had gray
eyes and was wounded by police fire. The mortally wounded
Sheriff Kinchen also said before he died that he had shot the
assailant.
Al-Amin has dark brown eyes and was uninjured when
arrested.
Atlanta police claimed on the stand that there was no "trail
of blood" leading from the scene. For four days after the
shooting, however, every media outlet talked about a blood
trail police followed to a nearby vacant house. Once Al-Amin
was captured and found to be unharmed, the "trail of blood"
suddenly never existed or was written off as dried animal
blood.
Atlanta police officers who arrived within minutes of the
shooting testified in court that they did not secure the crime
scene. The police claim their failure to do so accounts for the
fact that the locations of the bullet shell casings in the
street don't match any of English's accounts of the
shoot-out.
Court testimony also exposed that the same police officer
who showed English a photo of Al-Amin for identification as the
suspect, within hours of English coming out of surgery, falsely
filled out the paperwork to get a search warrant for Al-Amin's
home and store.
Sgt. Scott Bennett stated in the warrant request, filed
several days after the shoot-out, that because of the blood
trail police needed to look for soiled clothing or other
indications of injury at Al-Amin's property. Police found no
such evidence but they did remove records and computer
equipment. Bennett has now testified that although he had no
knowledge of a blood trail, he swore to its existence in order
to get the search warrant.
And in sworn testimony, FBI agent Ron Campbell admitted that
after Al-Amin's arrest in Alabama, the agent kicked and spat on
a handcuffed and prone Al-Amin, calling him a "cop-killer."
Judge Stephanie Manis refused to allow defense attorneys to
question Campbell about a 1995 Philadelphia case in which he
shot a person in the back of the head, claiming the man had a
gun.
Reprinted from the March 14, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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