4 Apr 2000

The trial of Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin began in Atlanta before there had been a grand jury indictment, an extradition hearing, jury selection, or any evidence presented.

Al-Amin, a respected leader in Atlanta's Muslim community for close to 25 years, was already on trial by the media for the March 16 shooting death of one Fulton County deputy sheriff and the wounding of another.

After a week and a half of media accusations, Al-Amin was finally indicted on March 28, charged with the shooting of the two officers as they attempted to serve him a warrant for failure to appear in nearby Cobb County on charges of theft by receiving, no proof of insurance and impersonating an officer.

These initial charges stemmed from a traffic stop that almost certainly originated with racial profiling. Al-Amin had been driving a late-model vehicle with temporary dealer tags in an upscale area of Atlanta.

According to the police, the officers attempted to serve the warrant at about 10 p.m. at the address of the community store that Al-Amin has operated for years in the West End neighborhood in Atlanta. That community is home to more than 100 Muslim families who have settled in the neighborhood since Al-Amin founded a mosque there in 1976.

The door was locked and no one was there, so the deputies got back in their car and drove around the block. When they returned, a black Mercedes was parked at the corner near the store. Police claim that when they ordered the occupant to get out of the car and show his hands, he began firing a .223-caliber assault rifle.

Although the two deputies were wearing bulletproof vests, each was shot several times in the lower body and extremities. They fired their guns at least 10 times.

Al-Amin's trial by media began immediately after the shootings--when the local media referred to him as a controversial former Black Panther and a violent and dangerous fugitive. Many references to alleged criminal or violent behavior by former Black Panther members were included as "background" for stories about Al-Amin.

The Atlanta media used photographs of him from the 1960s when he was known as H. Rap Brown and was a member of the Black Panther Party, instead of current photos showing him as Imam of the Atlanta Community Mosque and leader of his West End community for over two decades.

More recent photos were used later--showing Al-Amin in an orange jail jumpsuit or a mug shot from a 1995 arrest. Members of the FBI Anti-Terrorist unit, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agents, and the Atlanta Police Department had arrested him on charges that he shot William Miles in the leg. Miles later recanted and said he was pressured by authorities to identify Al-Amin as the man who shot him.

In the days since Al-Amin's arrest in Lowndes County, Ala., every comment supporting his character and history as a leader in the predominantly Muslim neighborhood of West End has been accompanied in the media by inaccuracies, character assassination and outright lies.

One method the police and media are employing is to issue statements or publish articles one day, then retract or change them the next. One early article, for example, quoted a police source as saying Al-Amin was a suspect in 20 unsolved murders in the West End community. Later it was changed to 10 unsolved murders. Now it has been dropped.

Another early report stated that the assailant had been wounded in the shootout and left a trail of blood. However, Al-Amin was not wounded. Now the blood trail is considered by authorities to be irrelevant to the case.

The trial by media is an all-out onslaught to disparage Al-Amin on several fronts. Racist sentiments are used to stir up deeply held resentment against civil-rights activists in the South. Anti-Muslim bias is shown in the way the media describe Muslim residents of the West End and Lowndes County. There has been an attempt in the media to contrast the slain deputy and Al-Amin, both of whom are Black men.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution characterized Al-Amin as a two-timing, big-spending deadbeat living beyond his means and running a store and mosque for "members of the Atlanta Community Mosque [who] cut a distinctive path through the West End. Most wear non-Western clothing: veils and scarves for the women, long flowing robes and skullcaps for the men. But they combine their dress with `60s black militant gear: combat boots and fatigues."

Meanwhile, the slain deputy is honored as a family man renting a modest home in a neighborhood where "children played in the front yard and churchgoers climbed the steep hill at the end of the street."

This is clearly intended to divide the Black community of Atlanta. Now that a grand jury has indicted Al-Amin on 13 counts, he will likely face a Fulton County jury made up mostly of members of that community. With only circumstantial evidence and the testimony of the wounded deputy, the district attorney will need to divide in order to conquer.

The trial by media is simply the groundwork for that attack.