[3 articles]
Why Was a Controversial Imam Shot 20 Times?
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1958229,00.html
By Steven Gray
Feb. 01, 2010
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is a young, educated Nigerian who allegedly
tried to blow up Delta Flight 253 bound for Detroit on Christmas Day.
Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, shot to death in nearby Dearborn, Mich.,
by FBI agents last Oct. 28, was an African-American felon with an
apparent penchant for stolen goods and a far-fetched wish to
establish a Shari'a state on American soil. The two had nothing in
common other than being Muslims. And yet with the release Monday,
Feb. 1, of Abdullah's autopsy, their cases continue to haunt one of
metropolitan Detroit's few successful communities. The immigrants who
have made this America's largest Muslim community now fear they may
face the scrutiny they endured for years post-9/11.
The autopsy, released by Wayne County medical examiner Carl Schmidt,
showed that Abdullah was shot a total of 20 times, incurring 21
wounds. He had died during a raid by federal law-enforcement agents
on a warehouse in Dearborn, a 20-minute drive southwest of downtown
Detroit. And while federal authorities had claimed after the raid
that Abdullah opened fire after refusing to surrender his weapon,
Schmidt said Monday that when medical-examiner-office investigators
found Abdullah's body inside a semitrailer, the imam's hands were
cuffed behind his back. "I don't recall police being involved in a
case that's had as many gunshot wounds," he said.
Ronald Haddad, the police chief of Dearborn, is leading an
investigation that could result in charges of excessive force or even
murder against FBI agents. Either Kym Worthy, Wayne County's top
prosecutor, or Michigan attorney general Mike Cox will ultimately
determine whether to file charges. Department of Justice officials
are also reviewing the case. "This is a very unique case," says
Haddad. "Our mission right now is to ensure a fair, objective, honest
evaluation of what took place."
That will be tough. Abdullah's entire history is mysterious. Also
known as Christopher Thomas, Abdullah established a criminal record
in the late 1970s, when he was charged with resisting arrest and
assaulting a Mobile, Ala., police officer. In 1981 he was convicted
in Wayne County of felony assault and carrying a concealed weapon.
At some point he embraced Islam and became the local leader of a
Muslim sect known as the Ummah. In court documents, federal
authorities describe the Ummah as a "nationwide radical
fundamentalist Sunni group consisting mainly of African Americans"
who converted from Christianity while serving prison sentences. The
Ummah's national leader is Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, a militant civil
rightsera figure once known as H. Rap Brown. In 2001, al-Amin was
convicted of fatally shooting two Georgia police officers; he remains
in a federal prison.
Federal authorities began monitoring Detroit's Ummah in 2007, using
informants inside the group's main mosque. In court documents,
authorities portray Abdullah, 53, as a mesmerizing figure whose
sermons frequently included anti-U.S.-government rhetoric. He
allegedly called his flock to wage a violent "offensive jihad" rather
than a "defensive jihad" and taught that "every Muslim should have a
weapon and not be afraid to use their weapon when needed." In January
2009, when Detroit officials evicted the Ummah from its mosque for
failure to pay property taxes, police found firearms, knives and
martial-arts weapons inside Abdullah's apartment, which was
apparently inside the mosque. Authorities say the group participated
in an extensive theft ring: in February 2009, for instance, Abdullah
allegedly went to Chicago to obtain fur coats he believed were
stolen, then brought them to Michigan. Abdullah's son Mujahid
Carswell later tried to sell fur coats and laptops he believed were
stolen, according to court documents. (He has been charged with
committing, aiding or abetting others in the sale or receipt of
stolen goods transported between states.) Eleven of Abdullah's
followers have been arrested on an assortment of charges, including
possession of firearms by a convicted felon, mail fraud and
conspiring to receive and sell stolen goods. And their leader, of
course, has been killed.
Since the Abdullah case, there has been a quiet debate in the broader
Islamic community about whether the Ummah can be considered
authentically Muslim. Says Ibrahim Aljahim, a Yemeni-American leader:
"Islam is a peaceful religion, while these terrorists are
nonbelievers and hypocrites." Nevertheless, the cases of Adbullah and
Abdulmutallab have prompted protests from a community fearful of
undeserved scrutiny. Abdullah's funeral, at a black mosque in a
hardscrabble Detroit neighborhood, drew Muslims of Yemeni and Somali
origin. Abdullah is believed to be the first imam to be killed by
American law-enforcement authorities spurring growing concern about
law enforcement's use of informants to target mosques with poorly
educated people, many of whom are felons with bleak job prospects.
"Although Luqman was a black man, he was an imam. If one imam can be
killed by law enforcement, any imam can be killed by law
enforcement," says Dawud Walid, a local Muslim leader.
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Report due in imam's death; protest planned
http://www.freep.com/article/20100201/NEWS05/2010328/1001/NEWS/Local-news-briefs-Report-due-in-imams-death-protest-planned
Feb. 1, 2010
DEARBORN
A protest is planned for this morning outside the Dearborn Police
Department during a news conference to release the autopsy report of
Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, the Muslim leader who died in a shootout
with FBI agents.
"We want to let people know we won't tolerate this type of vicious
assault on citizens," Ron Scott, with the Detroit Coalition Against
Police Brutality, said Sunday. "An assault on Muslims is an assault
on everyone."
Scott's coalition is holding the rally along with the Michigan
Emergency Coalition against War and Injustice, a Detroit-based group.
The FBI has said that Abdullah was an Islamic extremist who was
dealing in stolen goods. Federal officials said that Abdullah opened
fire during an Oct. 28 raid in a Dearborn warehouse by FBI agents
seeking to arrest him and 10 others on suspicion of buying and
selling stolen items provided by an undercover informant.
Andrew Arena, special agent in charge of the Detroit FBI office, said
last week that although the case ended tragically, his agents acted
appropriately in the two-year investigation of Abdullah and during the raids.
The FBI has portrayed Abdullah as a Sunni Islamic extremist who spoke
against law enforcement and followed Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the
Muslim leader formerly known as H. Rap Brown, in prison for killing a
police officer.
The rally is set for about 10:15 a.m. across the street from the
Police Department, 16099 Michigan Ave.
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Inquiry launched into death of imam shot in raid by FBI agents
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100203/FOREIGN/702029827/1014/NEWS
Steven Stanek, Foreign Correspondent
February 03. 2010
The US justice department has launched an investigation into the
fatal shooting of an imam near Detroit, Michigan, by FBI agents.
Amid mounting pressure from Muslim-American groups, civil liberties
activists and members of Congress, the justice department's civil
rights division is conducting a probe of an FBI raid on October 28
that ended in gunfire, killing Luqman Ameen Abdullah, the spiritual
leader of a small, predominantly African-American mosque.
The investigation was confirmed at a press conference in Detroit
yesterday by John Conyers, a Democratic congressman from Michigan and
chairman of the House judiciary committee, who had been pushing for
an independent inquiry.
A day earlier, medical examiners released an autopsy report showing
that Abdullah was shot nearly two dozen times, sustaining wounds to
the head, abdomen, genital area and back. Medical examiners said
Abdullah's hands were cuffed behind his back when they arrived at the scene.
FBI agents have maintained that they used appropriate force in the
raid after Abdullah opened fire on officers, killing an FBI dog. They
said all suspects, in all circumstances, are handcuffed for the
protection of police officers and agents.
"On the surface, someone being shot 21 times raises quite a few
questions in the criminal justice system," Mr Conyers said at the
Tuesday press conference, the Detroit News reported.
The local police department is investigating the matter and the FBI
has been carrying out an internal investigation. Sandra Berchtold, a
spokeswoman for the FBI office in Detroit, stood by previous
assertions that the agents acted according to agency protocol.
"With all the information that we had, we did what we had to do. We
did what we were trained to do," she said. "Before people make any
judgment, wait for the rest of the information to come out."
The FBI has not said how many agents were involved in the raid.
In a criminal complaint filed in October, the FBI painted Abdullah as
an extremist who subscribed to a radical anti-government ideology and
often talked of killing police officers.
Abdullah was a "highly placed" leader of a radical Sunni
fundamentalist group, Ummah, meaning community, that seeks to
establish a separate Islamic state in the United States, the complaint said.
The group's leader, Jamil Abdullah al Amin, formerly known as H Rap
Brown, is serving a life sentence in a federal prison for the murder
of two police officers in Georgia. He was formerly a member of the
Black Panther Party, which led the "black power" movement in the
1960s and 1970s.
Abdullah's family denies that he was a violent extremist.
The FBI said Abdullah was at the centre of a two-year-long undercover
investigation into weapons violations and the alleged buying and
selling of stolen items, including fur coats and laptop computers.
Eleven other men have been indicted as part of that investigation,
though no one has been charged with terrorist activity.
Abdullah's violent death sparked outrage from an array of advocacy
groups who have suggested that the shooting was racially motivated or
tied to anti-Islamic sentiments. Detroit is the country's 11th
largest city and home to one of the country's largest Muslim communities.
Detroit's mayor, Dave Bing, said in November that he supports an
independent investigation, as has the editorial board of one of the
city's major newspapers.
The case against Abdullah, which involved several undercover
informants, also has touched a nerve in Muslim communities and among
civil liberties advocates who have raised concerns about FBI
surveillance in mosques and Islamic charities. In the past year,
Muslims have decried the use of informants in mosques and charities
in New York, California and Ohio.
In April, the Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan asked Eric
Holder, the federal attorney general, to investigate complaints that
Michigan Muslims were being approached by the FBI to spy on
unsuspecting worshippers, including monitoring their legitimate
charitable donations.
"A lot of people's worst fears came true in [Abdullah's] case," said
Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the
Council on American-Islamic Relations, adding that members of the
Michigan Muslim community are suspicious of the FBI's motives. "We
are highly disturbed and we do question the veracity of some of the
things the FBI has said."
In a January 13 letter to Mr Holder, Mr Conyers called on the justice
department to review the FBI's use of confidential informants in
houses of worship.
"This country has seen national security fears invoked to justify
overreaching surveillance and investigation of religious leaders too
many times in the past," Mr Conyers wrote, invoking the FBI
wiretapping of the Rev Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s.
"At a time when our national security depends so heavily on positive
relations with Muslim communities in the United States and around the
world, the controversy surrounding this aspect of the matter is
especially destructive."
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