[Pnews] Imam Jamil Al-Amin targeted by the FBI

[Prisoner News]

https://www.workers.org/2019/10/43983/


  Imam Jamil Al-Amin targeted by the FBI

By Dianne Mathiowetz <https://www.workers.org/author/dianne/> posted on 
October 10, 2019
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A two-day conference, “Re-Learning H. Rap Brown,” was held in Atlanta 
Oct. 4 and 5. Those dates mark the globally known Black freedom 
fighter’s 76th birthday  and the 50th anniversary of publication of his 
ground-shaking book, “Die Nigger Die,” a searing account of white 
supremacy and racist violence.

Multiple panels composed of movement veterans, scholars, family members 
and former political prisoners provided historical information, personal 
stories and insights into H. Rap Brown’s leadership, first as a SNCC 
(Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) chairperson and then as the 
esteemed Muslim cleric, Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.

The program highlighted the decades of U.S. government surveillance and 
efforts to undermine, distort and derail Brown’s organizing Black 
resistance to Jim Crow segregation in the South and racist oppression 
everywhere.

The illegal acts committed against Brown, others like the Rev. Dr. 
Martin Luther King Jr., and organizations as varied as the Southern 
Christian Leadership Council and Students for a Democratic Society were 
part of the FBI’s COINTELPRO plan to “neutralize” dissent. Every measure 
— from infiltration and disinformation to assassination and framed-up 
charges — was employed under this secret program instituted by FBI 
Director J. Edgar Hoover.

 1. Rap Brown was considered so dangerous to the status quo that in 1968
    the U.S. Congress passed the “Rap Brown” Federal Anti-Riot Act,
    making it illegal to travel from one state to another, write a
    letter, make a phone call or speak on radio or television with the
    “intent” to encourage a person to riot.

Following his conversion to Islam while in New York state prison from 
1971 to 1976, Imam Jamil Al-Amin moved to Atlanta, established a mosque 
in the city’s historically Black West End neighborhood and began 
creating programs to serve youth, women and senior residents being 
harmed by the presence of drug dealers.

An illegal traffic stop in suburban Cobb County in May 1999 provided the 
pretext for the repressive state apparatus to try to curtail and destroy 
Al-Amin’s influence.

Two Fulton County sheriff’s deputies showed up at Al-Amin’s neighborhood 
store on March 16, 2000, with a warrant related to the traffic stop. A 
firefight ensued with an unknown person who, according to the surviving 
deputy, was 5-feet, 10-inches tall with “cold grey eyes” and wounded by 
the deputies.

Despite Jamil Al-Amin being 6-feet, 5-inches tall with brown eyes, a 
national manhunt was called for the former H. Rap Brown — who when 
captured had no evidence of wounds.

Imam Jamil was charged with 13 criminal counts, including the murder of 
one deputy and the wounding of the other. Much evidence was not allowed 
at his trial, including a confession by Otis Jackson that he was the 
shooter.

Imam Jamil Al-Amin was convicted and sentenced to life without parole. A 
judicial gag order forbidding any media interviews exists to this day.

Until August 2007, Al-Amin was held in 23-hour involuntary lockdown at 
Reidsville State Prison. Then Georgia Corrections officials, fearful of 
his influence among Muslim prisoners, requested the Federal Bureau of 
Prisons take him into custody. For the next seven years, he was held in 
solitary confinement in the underground cells of a Colorado supermax 
prison where his health suffered. After several other moves, he is 
currently incarcerated in Tucson, Ariz.

Current political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and Sekou Odinga, a recently 
released Black Liberation Army member, have urged the building of a mass 
movement to demand Al-Amin’s freedom from the vengeful hands of the 
government.

The conference, organized by the Imam Jamil Action Network, the Malcolm 
X Grassroots Movement, Workers World Party and others, successfully 
brought the work of H. Rap Brown in the 1960s and 70s and its 
continuation now by Imam Jamil Al-Amin to a new generation of students 
and activists.

/For more information and to become involved, go to 
//whathappened2rap.com/ <http://whathappened2rap.com/>/or 
//imamjamilactionnetwork.weebly.com/ 
<http://imamjamilactionnetwork.weebly.com/>/. To send a message of 
solidarity, write Imam Jamil Al-Amin, #99974-555, USP Tucson, U.S. 
Penitentiary, PO Box 24550, Tucson, AZ 85734./

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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