Freedom for Imam Jamil Al-Amin (Formerly H Rap Brown) is Closer than Ever
by Hamzah Raza; Cornel West
Political prisoner, Imam Jamil Al-Amin, has seen immense growth in grassroots support of his freedom over the past year. The recent launch of the Freedom for Imam Jamil Al-Amin coalition, as well as artists such as Noname, Diddy, TI, and Killer Mike coming out in support of his case, has exemplified civil society’s advocacy for freedom for Imam Jamil Al-Amin. It is important to note that politicians are thermometers, not thermostats. Grassroots activists are the thermostats that heat things up, whereas politicians are merely thermometers that tell us when the temperature has been sufficiently heated up.
In response to grassroots support, newly elected Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis, has committed to giving the case a second look. When asked about Imam Jamil’s case, Willis stated that:
“The District Attorney’s job is to make sure justice is done, not just convict people...That’s why, as District Attorney, I will always consider information that calls into question past convictions. If people have information that may indicate that this conviction was unjust, I will certainly provide them the opportunity to come forward and I will give the information full consideration. If I agree that the information calls into question the legitimacy of the conviction, I will reopen the case.”
Imam Jamil Al-Amin, formerly known as H Rap Brown, is a 77 year old political prisoner and pioneer of the Black freedom struggle. He has spent the past two decades in prison for a crime that he did not commit. He served as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a role once held by the late Congressman John Lewis.
In the 1970s, H Rap Brown converted to Islam, and adopted the name Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. After studying to become an Imam(a Muslim religious leader), Al-Amin emerged as an Islamic theologian concerned with the spiritual upliftment and social resurrection of his community in the West End neighborhood of Atlanta.
Despite this deep dedication to his religion and the service to the community that accompanied it, Al-Amin remained the target of government surveillance that went back to his Cointelpro days as H Rap Brown. The FBI compiled a 44,000-word file on Al-Amin and his Muslim community, repeatedly attempting to pin him with a crime. Between 1992 and 1997, authorities investigated Al-Amin “in connection with everything from domestic terrorism to gunrunning to 14 homicides in Atlanta’s West End.”
After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Al-Amin was interrogated by the FBI as to whether he had played a role in the attack.
Al-Amin’s brother, Ed Brown stated that:
“Y’know…something happens. Say the first attempt to bomb the Trade Center, right? They feed their infallible profile into their computer. Muslim…radical…violent…anti-American, whatever, who knows. Anyway, boom, out spits the names, H. Rap Brown prominent among them. Next thing the Feds come storming into the community and haul Jamil in. This actually happened. Of course, it’s stupid. And every time they have to let him go. But how do you stop it? A goddamn nightmare, they never quit.”
Two years after that, Al-Amin was arrested by a joint force of the FBI, local police, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives after a 22-year-old, William Miles, was shot in the leg. One must wonder why the FBI was concerned about a non-fatal shooting that hit a young man’s right leg. But even in this case, Imam Jamil Al-Amin was found not guilty and cleared of any wrongdoing.
Eventually, a shootout with police occurred on March 16th, 2000 outside of Al-Amin’s convenience store, leading to the death of a police officer. Eyewitnesses described the shooter as 5’8”, 170 pounds, with grey eyes, and that he suffered gunshot wounds. Al-Amin is 6’5”, lanky, has brown eyes, and did not suffer a single wound. A man named Otis Jackson matched this description and his confession to the crime was later documented by FBI agent, Devon Mahoney, on June 29th, 2000.
Shockingly, Jackson’s confession was not included in Jamil Al-Amin’s trial in March of 2002. In the midst of government surveillance on civil rights leaders and post-9/11 Islamophobia, Imam Jamil Al-Amin was sentenced to life without parole for the crime of murdering a police officer.
Notably, upon his arrest, an FBI agent named Ronald Campbell allegedly found guns in the woods adjacent to where Al-Amin was arrested. However, despite decades of FBI surveillance, there was absolutely no evidence linking Al-Amin to the guns. They did not find a single fingerprint or Al-Amin’s DNA on the guns or ammunition. The guns were not hidden or concealed in any way. At trial, the state advanced a far-fetched argument in which Al-Amin meticulously cleared the weapons of his DNA and fingerprints, but did not do anything to hide the weapons.
Many have suggested that Agent Campbell, an FBI agent who physically assaulted and spat on Imam Jamil Al-Amin upon arresting him, was the one who planted the guns. In 1995, Campbell was accused of shooting Glenn Thomas, an African American man, in the back of the head in Philadelphia. In that case, too, a fingerprint-less gun was found next to the man’s dead body.
In addition, Campbell first claimed that he was with other officers when he found the gun but upon cross examination claimed that he was actually alone when he found the gun. One is led to wonder how such contradictory testimony, which was the sole means of connecting Al-Amin to the guns, is any sort of evidence at all.
Ballistic evidence also appeared to confirm Al-Amin’s link to the guns. But Bernadette Davy, who was the firearms examiner in Al-Amin’s case, was later fired from her job for breaching protocol when examining weapons in such cases, leading to faulty results, faulty analysis, and wrongful convictions. It seems that Al-Amin’s case could have been another one of the wrongful convictions that her breaches of protocol produced, and that caused her to eventually lose her job.
Beyond the fact that Al-Amin has languished for two decades in prison for a crime that another man has confessed to, courts have also ruled repeatedly that Al-Amin’s constitutional rights were violated at his trial. Al-Amin’s initial trial ended with the prosecutor conducting a mock cross examination, using a white board in which the prosecutor answered questions as he thought Al-Amin would answer them. Every court that Al-Amin has appealed his case to has ruled that this was “prosecutorial misconduct” that violated the constitutional rights of Al-Amin. They ruled that, despite this misconduct, it is not enough to warrant a retrial as there is not sufficient evidence that violating his constitutional rights affected the guilty verdict of the trial. Despite this, there exists an affidavit from one of the juror’s in Al-Amin’s trial that states that she would not have supported the guilty verdict had this mock cross examination not occurred. This would have led to a hung jury, and an inability to sentence Imam Jamil Al-Amin.
Because every appeal as of now has been in relation to violations of his constitutional rights, not a single court has heard that another man confessed to the crime Imam Jamil Al-Amin is in prison for. That reality could change now with the creation of the Fulton County Conviction Integrity Unit which was created to “conduct collaborative, good-faith case reviews designed to ensure the integrity of a conviction and remedy wrongful convictions.” In an appeal to this unit, the Otis Jackson confession may finally be heard.
At an event commemorating this new unit, Andrew Young, the former Mayor of Atlanta, and United States Ambassador to the United Nations, declared that the Convictions Integrity Unit should look at the case of Imam Jamil Al-Amin. Young stated that this is a case “that weighs heavily on my heart because I really think he was wrongfully convicted. I’m talking about Jamil Al-Amin (H Rap Brown). I think it’s time to rejudge. He’s been dying of cancer and has been suffering away from his family in the worst prisons of this nation.”
With that impetus, Al-Amin’s family is now set to appeal to the Conviction Integrity Unit where they have the best chance in decades for a retrial. Finally, evidence that had previously been left out (such as another man confessing to the crime) can be reviewed by a court. Al-Amin has spent the majority of his 20 years in prison in solitary confinement, and legal experts have even “discovered retaliatory actions on the part of prison officials against Al-Amin.” He has suffered cancer, a stroke, a prison covid outbreak, and other health scares while in prison. After two decades, it is possible that he can finally attain freedom.
The current Fulton County DA has immense discretion in whether to reopen this case. The movement to free Imam Jamil Al-Amin has the obvious objective of freeing a man who is unjustly incarcerated and languishing in prison for a crime that he did not commit. But the movement to free him is much greater than that. For this Convictions Integrity Unit review to succeed, Al-Amin needs the public’s support. Here are some action items that one can take to help achieve that.
Send this email template to Fani Willis asking her to bring Imam Jamil Back to Georgia.
Donate to Imam Jamil’s legal defense fund
Buy some free rap merch that will go towards his legal defense fund
Hamzah Raza completed his graduate studies at Harvard University and is an alumnus of Vanderbilt University. Follow him on Twitter @raza_hamzah
Cornel West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist and leading member of Democratic Socialists of America. He is a Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University.
Essays from Raza and West can be found in the book: “The Imprisonment of Imam Abdullah Jamil Al-Amin: Is it a Government Conspiracy?”
IJAN, the Imam Jamil Action Network is calling for community members and supporters to become involved in a peaceful but visible demonstration outside of the Fulton County District Attorney Fanni Willis’s office on Friday May 7, 2021/ Ramadan 25, 1442 from 4-5:30pm. For further info please visit the website www.ImamJamilActionNetwork.org as well as the IJAN and IJAN-ATLANTA FB PAGES for more grassroots actions locally and nationally
ALSO visit and support the website:
www.WhatHappened2Rap.com
FREE IMAM JAMIL and all POLITICAL PRISONERS ... FREE EM ALL!
More than ever let’s get mobilized to free an innocent man.
#Free Jameel now !!