[Cdhrsupport] Mainstream Media on Jalil's Extradition Hearing

[SF-8 case]

Cop killer fights extradition from state

Judge rules radical group member will face trial in California in 1971
attack.

Friday, March 23, 2007
By John Stith
Staff writer

Anthony Bottom, a member of the radical Black Liberation Army and serving
time in New York state for killing two New York City police officers, will
be sent back to California, where he faces charges that he and eight
others killed a police officer in San Francisco in 1971.

Bottom, who is now known as Jalil Muntaqim, challenged the validity of the
warrant asking for extradition during a hearing Thursday in Cayuga County
Court. He said the warrant and supporting documents were based on
inaccurate information. Because of that, the extradition should be denied,
he said.

"I'm here trying to get you to understand . . . it's based on false
information," Bottom said.

Bottom-Muntaqim is serving 25 years to life in New York state for the 1977
killing of two New York City police officers.

California authorities claim Bottom and eight other members of the Black
Liberation Army - a radical faction of the Black Panther Party - attacked
a police station in the Ingleside section of San Francisco on Aug. 29,
1971, killing a police officer. Bottom is charged with first-degree murder
and conspiracy to commit murder in California.

Bottom-Muntaqim said in court papers that he was in a San Francisco jail
when the officer was killed, and that he was in San Jose and not San
Francisco when the alleged conspiracy occurred.

Cayuga County Judge Thomas G. Leone told Bottom-Muntaqim the court's job
Thursday was to decide if the extradition request was filed properly, if
Bottom-Muntaqim was the person named in the request, if he was charged
with a crime in California and was he in that state when the crime
occurred.

The judge found all to be true and ordered Bottom-Muntaqim held for
extradition.

Security was tight for the court hearing. Five armed state corrections
officers were in the courtroom, along with two armed sheriff's deputies.

About a dozen members of the Syracuse chapter of Jericho Movement were on
hand for the hearing. According to its Web site, the organization is
fighting for amnesty and freedom for inmates it considers political
prisoners.

Bottom-Muntaqim is a political prisoner, said Adam Carpinelli, an SU
graduate student who acted as spokesman for the local Jericho chapter.
Bottom-Muntaqim and others were set up, Carpinelli said, by government
operatives as part of the FBI's counterintelligence programs (also known
as Cointelpro) begun under FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in the late 1960s
and early 1970s.

Those programs continue to this day, as shown by California dredging up a
35-year-old murder case, Carpinelli said.

"Accusing them of murder is a way to distracting from all the civil rights
and human rights violations that the government has been engaged in since
the 1960s, under the Hoover Cointelpro programs," Carpinelli said. "That's
what needs to be discussed."

John Stith can be reached at jstith at syracuse.com or 253-7316.