[Ppnews] Jamil Al-Amin Moved to Federal Custody

[Political Prisoner News]

1960s Militant Moved to Federal Custody

By GREG BLUESTEIN | Associated Press Writer
9:22 AM CDT, August 3, 2007

ATLANTA - A 1960s black militant sentenced to life for killing a 
deputy in 2000 has been transferred into federal custody because his 
high-profile status presented "unique issues," Georgia corrections 
officials said. State officials decided they were no longer equipped 
to handle Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, who gained fame when he was a Black 
Panthers leader known as H. Rap Brown, corrections spokeswoman 
Yolanda Thompson said Thursday. She said nothing specific triggered 
the move. "We assess our inmate population daily, and we assess the 
needs of our inmates," Thompson said. "This is an ongoing case, 
involving the best interest of our overall population. And he's a 
very high-profile inmate."


Al-Amin, 63, was taken to the Federal Bureau of Prisons' transfer 
center in Oklahoma on Wednesday, said Felicia Ponce, a bureau 
spokeswoman. He remained there Friday.

Al-Amin is serving a life sentence without parole for the March 2000 
shooting death of Fulton County Sheriff's Deputy Ricky Kinchen.
Kinchen, 38, was killed and his partner, Aldranon English, was 
wounded when they went to serve a warrant to Al-Amin. The warrant was 
for failing to appear in court to face charges of driving a stolen 
car and impersonating a police officer.

Al-Amin was captured in Alabama four days later. He was convicted in 2002.

His family and friends have claimed that state prison wardens 
mistreated Al-Amin. Two years ago, supporters protested outside the 
prison system headquarters, claiming that Al-Amin was being subjected 
to solitary confinement 23 hours a day and forced to submit to 
humiliating strip searches in front of female guards.

A state prison spokesman had said Al-Amin was under lockdown because 
of his security risk level, which is based on an inmate's criminal 
history and behavior in prison. The spokesman denied that Al-Amin 
would be subjected to strip searches in front of female guards.
Many still know Al-Amin as H. Rap Brown, the radical who served as a 
leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1967, he 
famously said that violence was "as American as cherry pie."

Brown changed his name when he converted to the Dar-ul Islam movement 
in the 1970s while serving a five-year sentence for his role in a 
robbery that ended in a shootout with New York police.

He later emerged as a leader of one of the nation's largest black 
Muslim groups, the National Ummah. The movement, which has formed 36 
mosques around the nation, has been credited with revitalizing 
poverty-stricken pockets such as Atlanta's West End, where Al-Amin 
owned a grocery store.




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