Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
Speaker 1: those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
Speaker 1: and do not represent those of iHeartRadio or their employees.
Speaker 1: This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be
Speaker 1: suitable for everyone.
Speaker 2: Listening to Discretion is advised. Radical is released every Tuesday
Speaker 2: and brought to you absolutely free, but if you want
Speaker 2: to add free listening and early access to next week's episode,
Speaker 2: subscribe to tenderfoot Plus. For more information, check out tenderfootplus
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 3: Enjoy the episode Campsite Media.
Speaker 2: When European settlers arrived in the colonies in the seventeenth century,
Speaker 2: they brought the death penalty with them. The first recorded
Speaker 2: execution by Europeans was carried out in sixteen oh eight,
Speaker 2: long before American independence and the ratification of the Constitution.
Speaker 2: Crime subject to the death penalty have included murder, robbery, rape,
Speaker 2: horse dealing, and aiding a runaway slave. For most of
Speaker 2: the twentieth century, the state of Georgia electrocuted intimates to
Speaker 2: death right up until the time of a mam Jamial's arrest, actually,
Speaker 2: but the courts ruled that cruel and unusual, so when
Speaker 2: a Maam Jamil's life was put in the hands of
Speaker 2: twelve good folks from Georgia. He faced lethal injection that
Speaker 2: was supposed to be more humane. A Mam Jamil's defense
Speaker 2: team felt the pressure. Their arguments, the words they chose,
Speaker 2: even their facial expressions. It could all affect the jury's opinion.
Speaker 2: A mistake, a poor choice could lead to a mam
Speaker 2: Jamial being sentenced to death and ultimately killed. A Mam
Speaker 2: Jamial's defense attorney, Tony Axam.
Speaker 4: I would be asking to save his life. So that's all.
Speaker 4: That's a tremendous bird. You've said, jurors, he's not guilty.
Speaker 4: There's not enough evidence, and now you have to come
Speaker 4: in front of that same jury and say, okay, let's
Speaker 4: assume you got it right. I have a second argument
Speaker 4: for you. He should live.
Speaker 2: The prosecution was the first side to call witnesses. Deputy
Speaker 2: Kinchin's mother took the stand. She said when she was
Speaker 2: at home, she found herself sitting next to the phone
Speaker 2: waiting for her son to call. Kinchin's sister said his
Speaker 2: death left her depressed and angry. Kinchin's wife said he
Speaker 2: had been a good father and that some days she
Speaker 2: just sat and cried. The defense called witnesses in an
Speaker 2: effort to show that a man Jimil and the decades
Speaker 2: before the shooting, had lived a life of service. Andrew Young,
Speaker 2: the former mayor of Atlanta and aid to doctor King,
Speaker 2: he was a defense witness. Remember it was Young who,
Speaker 2: nearly twenty years after this day in court, wrote a
Speaker 2: letter to the Fulton County DA's office arguing that AmAm
Speaker 2: Jamial was innocent. Young said that he and a Maam
Speaker 2: Jamil or h. Rat Brown at the time, met briefly
Speaker 2: in the sixties. They weren't close, but Young still knew
Speaker 2: that Rapp had lived through Jim Crow worked in the
Speaker 2: rural South, endured violence, and spent much of his life
Speaker 2: as part of a movement pushing to improve the lives
Speaker 2: of black people that counted for something. The way Young
Speaker 2: saw it, Axem told me and Maam Jamil had built
Speaker 2: up some credits going through all that credit to some
Speaker 2: imaginary system weighing the value of human lives.
Speaker 5: So he should be spared.
Speaker 6: Now we're at two thousand and we still don't have freedom.
Speaker 6: And that's the storm that Jamil Alamin weathered, and being
Speaker 6: in that storm, he deserves to live even if you
Speaker 6: think that he did it, spare his life, let him live.
Speaker 2: In their closing arguments, the prosecution to the murder was
Speaker 2: especially vile and that it showed a Maam Jamil was depraved.
Speaker 2: Prosecutors showed gruesome, bloody photos of Kinchin's wounds. They said
Speaker 2: it mattered that it was a sheriff's deputy who was killed,
Speaker 2: and by sentencing a Maam Jamil to die, the jury
Speaker 2: would be signaling that violence against law enforcement won't be tolerated.
Speaker 2: Jack Martin, in his closing argument, stressed the power that
Speaker 2: society had put in the hands of the jury. What
Speaker 2: is to be decided now, he said, is the most
Speaker 2: important decision that any person ever makes in their whole life,
Speaker 2: the most important decision that any democracy or any government
Speaker 2: ever makes, the one time that we presume to be
Speaker 2: god like. I appeal to your best, not your worst,
Speaker 2: Martin said. I appeal to your hopes for the future,
Speaker 2: not your fears. I appealed to the possibility and the
Speaker 2: reality of redemption in all of us, not the brutal
Speaker 2: satisfaction of revenge.
Speaker 5: Not the worst than us.
Speaker 2: AmAm Jamil didn't fear execution, and as the jury deliberated
Speaker 2: on a sentence. He put everything in the hands of
Speaker 2: a law. After five hours, the jury decided against the
Speaker 2: death penalty and they sentenced a Mam Jamil to life
Speaker 2: in prison without parole. From Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV, and
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcasts, This is Radical, I'm Mostly Secret, Episode five,
Speaker 2: Cherry Pie, AmAm Jamille h.
Speaker 5: Rat Brown.
Speaker 2: He had a gift for delivering unforgettable lines. But there's
Speaker 2: one phrase that's stuck in our culture memory more than
Speaker 2: any other. He said it in the speech in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven during the long hot Summer of Black Rebellion.
Speaker 7: Violence is a plot of America's culture.
Speaker 6: It is as American as cherry pie.
Speaker 2: Violence is as American as cherry pie. It's meant as
Speaker 2: a statement of fact, one of those beautiful phrases that's
Speaker 2: simple and profound. At the same time, Rap wasn't saying
Speaker 2: that violence is inherently good. He was saying that violence
Speaker 2: is America, and America is violence. America was founded with violence,
Speaker 2: built with violence, and persists because of violence. Never mind
Speaker 2: that Americans eat apple pie way more than cherry pie.
Speaker 2: The slip better conjures up the red bloodiness of it all.
Speaker 5: I was still obsessed with getting to.
Speaker 2: The bottom of what happened on the ninth of March sixteenth,
Speaker 2: two thousand. The evidence that came out at trial, it
Speaker 2: was too shaky for me to set aside the possibility
Speaker 2: that a Mamjimial was wrongfully convicted. But I was pulled
Speaker 2: in another direction too. I needed to investigate this American violence,
Speaker 2: how it operates, and the consequences, however dark or disguised
Speaker 2: they might be. I since it was key to understanding
Speaker 2: a Maamjamial and to understanding the eruption of violence in
Speaker 2: the West End, whether a Mam Jamil was involved or not.
Speaker 2: After AmAm Jamil was convicted and sentenced, law enforcement officials
Speaker 2: held a secret meeting with the warden of Reidsville Prison
Speaker 2: in Tattnall County, Georgia. A Maam Jamil was going to
Speaker 2: be transferred there. Tattnall County's story is America's story crammed
Speaker 2: into five hundred square miles of swamps and rolling hills
Speaker 2: in southeastern Georgia. One point a quarter of the county's
Speaker 2: population was enslaved raising beef, cattle, and cotton under the
Speaker 2: Georgia sun and under the threat of death, rape, and
Speaker 2: family separation. Much of Tattenneau County's success at the time,
Speaker 2: according to an official county website, can be attributed to
Speaker 2: slave labor.
Speaker 5: Then the State of Georgia opened.
Speaker 2: A prison near the county seat, Readsville, and much of
Speaker 2: the county's growth in the last thirty five years, again,
Speaker 2: according to an official county website, can be attributed to
Speaker 2: Regisville Prison. In that secret meeting, law enforcement officials told
Speaker 2: the warden that thirty to fifty thousand people had vowed
Speaker 2: to save a Maam Demial and to spirit him away
Speaker 2: from the State of Georgia by force if necessary. Thirty
Speaker 2: to fifty thousand people before law enforcement flew a Maamjamial
Speaker 2: to Reedsville in a helicopter. They set up a five
Speaker 2: mile perimeter around the prison. A Ma'am Tarak Khan was
Speaker 2: the sole Muslim chape at the prison.
Speaker 5: When a Man Jamial arrived.
Speaker 7: They treated it like al chapo, right like that there
Speaker 7: was gonna be you know, this army is going to
Speaker 7: break him out of something, and the snipers and everybody
Speaker 7: outside and trucks and this and that and bring him
Speaker 7: in in a hui, you know, and all of that
Speaker 7: kind of stuff, and uh, it wasn't none of that.
Speaker 7: You know, they just overdo stuff.
Speaker 2: A Mam Tarik had met a Man Jamil before on
Speaker 2: the outside. They seen each other at basketball games, and
Speaker 2: a Mam Tark went to the Western Mastet a couple
Speaker 2: of times as a chaplain. He had seen guards abuse
Speaker 2: inmates for basically no reason, and he worried they would
Speaker 2: give a man Jamil an especially hard time. So after
Speaker 2: the helicopter landed the Hueiye, he went to check on him.
Speaker 7: I wanted to stay there a little longer that day
Speaker 7: to make sure that when hey body men, that he
Speaker 7: didn't get scraped up, you know.
Speaker 8: What I mean.
Speaker 2: Reedsville was one of the state's highest security prisons. Politicians
Speaker 2: called inmates there the worst of the worst. A Ma'am Jimil,
Speaker 2: now nearly sixty years old, was held in a unit
Speaker 2: named K Building and solitary Confinement. The doors to the
Speaker 2: cells and K Building were solid metal, except for a
Speaker 2: slot for a tray of food and a flap guards
Speaker 2: would open to handcuff the inmates. A Maam Jamil's cell
Speaker 2: was probably eight feet by ten feet, just enough room
Speaker 2: for him to take three steps in either direction. He
Speaker 2: was forced to spend twenty four hours a day inside
Speaker 2: his cell, except for the occasions he was given an
Speaker 2: hour to go outside to get some fresh air and
Speaker 2: direct sunlight, but even then he was still inside a cage.
Speaker 2: Our systems of public safety are built on the idea
Speaker 2: that in order to protect the public, we must harm
Speaker 2: some individuals. Punishment is a kind of harm, a kind
Speaker 2: of violence. Often that as a society we have read
Speaker 2: a person deserves because of the acts they committed. The
Speaker 2: death penalty is an obvious example of violence if it's
Speaker 2: squarely into the most common definition, the exercise of physical
Speaker 2: force against another, and the practice of solitary confinement isn't
Speaker 2: too far off. Most often, state violence is concealed by
Speaker 2: bureaucracy and innocuous terms corrections, k building, even confinement.
Speaker 7: They were really stringent on him, thinking that he was
Speaker 7: going to have control over people there, you know what
Speaker 7: I mean. But you know, he had an even mindset
Speaker 7: about him being in there. He wasn't panicking, you know,
Speaker 7: he just this is where I'm at, you know, this
Speaker 7: is the hand I'm in debt, So I'm here.
Speaker 2: A man Jamil was in solitary confinement, but he wasn't
Speaker 2: completely isolated. He could see visitors, and he had them
Speaker 2: almost every weekend in holiday. His wife Karima and their
Speaker 2: son Kyrie came about three times a month. Sister Karima,
Speaker 2: an attorney herself by this time, was working with a
Speaker 2: legal team to appeal to Mam Jimil's conviction and the
Speaker 2: Maam Jamil supporters. At least once a year, around Thanksgiving
Speaker 2: and Christmas, they gathered outside the prison to protest his
Speaker 2: conviction and his treatment inside. A Maam Jamil communicated with
Speaker 2: the other inmates in K Building by talking through air
Speaker 2: ducts between the cells. A Maam Tarak told us that
Speaker 2: AmAm Jamil gave the Shahada, the Muslim oath to a
Speaker 2: white supremacist and K Building that he converted the guy
Speaker 2: to Alam. A tale, maybe a true one from the
Speaker 2: legend of AmAm Jamil. A Ma'am Tark. He visited a
Speaker 2: K Building pretty regularly.
Speaker 7: It wasn't necessarily a special trip for him per se.
Speaker 7: But I've made short of when I went over there
Speaker 7: that I got a chance to talk with him. I
Speaker 7: called officer officer to dropped slot. There's a little slot
Speaker 7: there and they would drop the slot. So I don't
Speaker 7: have to talk in the crack of the door. But
Speaker 7: you know, I used to talk to him periodically, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean. And he always had good spirits.
Speaker 7: You know what I mean. He's locked up, don't have anything,
Speaker 7: and then ask you is anything I could do for
Speaker 7: you? You know what you need anything? I mean, that's his
Speaker 7: first words, you know, I mean, you locked up?
Speaker 5: What you got?
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying. So, but that's how he was.
Speaker 7: He always did that. Even if you see him now,
Speaker 7: he'll say the same thing.
Speaker 2: I know from court documents that when a Mamjamil arrived
Speaker 2: at regivial prison, the warden was immediately suspicious and wary
Speaker 2: of him. Mam Jamil was accused at least three times
Speaker 2: of being involved in escape plots. I'm talking Shawshank redemption
Speaker 2: type stuff here. One time he was allegedly caught hanging
Speaker 2: out near a broken window on the other side of
Speaker 2: the glass, a rope made of sheets and a hacksaw.
Speaker 2: He denied all of it, but the possibility of mam
Speaker 2: Jamil's escape that was just the beginning of the warden's concerns.
Speaker 2: In a memo from July two thousand and two, months
Speaker 2: after a Maam Jamil was convicted. The warden said that
Speaker 2: AmAm Jamil had the potential and influence to be a
Speaker 2: definite threat. This at the same time, he said that
Speaker 2: AmAm Jamil hadn't created any trouble, that his behavior was acceptable,
Speaker 2: and that the warden expected his behavior would continue to be.
Speaker 5: Acceptable to me.
Speaker 2: This contradiction that a Maam Jamil was a threat but
Speaker 2: also well behaved the warden was revealing a deeper fear,
Speaker 2: something like the evil energy that the US Marshall felt
Speaker 2: in that Alabama courtroom standing near him. The myth of
Speaker 2: a man Jamil. It was spreading out of a man
Speaker 2: Jamil's control and gaining traction among people with the power
Speaker 2: to punish. In two thousand and five, after three years
Speaker 2: of prison time, a Muslim inmate and a different facility
Speaker 2: is in a Mam Jamila message. The other guy wanted
Speaker 2: to know if a Mam Jamil would assume leadership over Muslims.
Speaker 2: Throughout the Georgia Department of Corrections, unifying Muslim inmates at
Speaker 2: over fifty prisons, a Ma'am Jamil said yes. A document
Speaker 2: was circulated for other Muslim inmates to sign if they
Speaker 2: agreed to pledge baya or loyalty to a man Jamil.
Speaker 2: The mission as it's laid out in the copy of
Speaker 2: the document we have seemed noble enough. It said, Look,
Speaker 2: Muslims aren't treated well in Georgia prisons. If we come
Speaker 2: together under a Mam Jamil, we can better advocate for
Speaker 2: ourselves and that will ultimately help us be better Muslims.
Speaker 2: But a Ma'am Tarik he didn't think this was a
Speaker 2: good idea, even though he had a lot of respect
Speaker 2: for a Maam Jamil.
Speaker 7: I think a few brothers told me about it, and
Speaker 7: they would ask me about it, and I told him, no,
Speaker 7: that's not gonna happen, because that would even that at
Speaker 7: that particular time, would trump the other authority that is there.
Speaker 2: The wardens ran the prisons period, and they would shut
Speaker 2: down any other parallel hierarchy. When prison administration learned of
Speaker 2: the BAI, they talked to a Maam Jimial about it
Speaker 2: and he said he would instruct the other Muslims to
Speaker 2: quash the effort. That would be the end of that.
Speaker 2: But in June of two thousand and six, about six
Speaker 2: months after the BAI began, the FBI published an internal
Speaker 2: report with the title the attempt to radicalize the Georgia
Speaker 2: Department of Corrections inmate population. The report called AmAm Jimil
Speaker 2: an Islamic extremist.
Speaker 5: Basically a terrorist.
Speaker 2: It ran through his biography, even quoted his fiery speech in.
Speaker 5: Cambridge, Maryland.
Speaker 2: The FBI report narrowed in on a few lines in
Speaker 2: the BAI document, and maybe reasonably so. One of the
Speaker 2: lines said the Georgia Department of Corrections is a battlefield
Speaker 2: and we need a general to coordinate and direct us,
Speaker 2: and another a quote from an Islamic text. It suggested
Speaker 2: violence against anyone who challenges the leader. Here's this idea again.
Speaker 2: Violence is a means for the greater good. It's scary
Speaker 2: for authorities when they're facing it too. It's why so
Speaker 2: much of the response from the FEDS was based on
Speaker 2: what they thought a man Jamil might do or how
Speaker 2: they imagine others might respond to him.
Speaker 5: Not what actually happened.
Speaker 2: One passage of the report reads, it should be noted
Speaker 2: that any statements made by Alamine could be taken in
Speaker 2: an extreme nature, and the content could be potentially dangerous,
Speaker 2: even if Alamine's intent was innocuous and Mama Jamil became
Speaker 2: bigger than he actually was, scarier than he actually was,
Speaker 2: because the fear of violence freaks you the fuck out.
Speaker 2: One morning in two thousand and seven, prison guards showed
Speaker 2: up at a mamm Jimial cell and k building. They
Speaker 2: took him out through the rear gate of the prison,
Speaker 2: where there was a caravan waiting. The guards put him
Speaker 2: in the back of an suv. We got you now
Speaker 2: that Mam Jamil, said, one of the guards told him.
Speaker 2: Then they drove off. In the most common definition of violence,
Speaker 2: like I mentioned a few minutes ago, the word simply
Speaker 2: means to exercise physical force against another. But there are
Speaker 2: also meetings of violence, obsolete uses dating back to the
Speaker 2: fifteenth century that define it as an abuse of power
Speaker 2: or authority that persecutes or oppresses. These days, we don't
Speaker 2: really call that violence. No blood, no visible injury, But
Speaker 2: the consequences of such violence that we don't really call violence,
Speaker 2: they're very real, tangible. The FBI surveillance of a Mamjmial
Speaker 2: the infiltration of the mass JD by informants, it could
Speaker 2: fall under this lesser used definition of violence, And the
Speaker 2: more I learned about the extent and duration of the
Speaker 2: surveillance the more I was convinced that it contributed to
Speaker 2: the shootout where there was very real blood a Ma'am
Speaker 2: Jamil's wife, Karima Elamine, she got information from the FBI
Speaker 2: that helped me draw this conclusion. Sister Karima is a lawyer,
Speaker 2: one I'm acquainted with. Actually, she represented me and my
Speaker 2: wife on our green card application. Embarrassingly enough, I didn't
Speaker 2: realize at the time who her husband was. We reconnected
Speaker 2: when I started working on this project, and she was
Speaker 2: as nice as ever, though she did tell me that
Speaker 2: my generation needs to know more of its history. Sister
Speaker 2: Kareema is pretty private and she didn't want to be interviewed,
Speaker 2: but we were able to find a recording of her
Speaker 2: from a rally to support AmAm Jamil that happened in Harlem.
Speaker 8: He struggle.
Speaker 2: Rallies for a man Jamil weren't uncommon after he was
Speaker 2: convicted and placed in isolation. This is one of the
Speaker 2: larger ones we've come across. There were about two hundred
Speaker 2: people there. Here's sister Kareema.
Speaker 9: I do want to extend email Jamil and I do
Speaker 9: call him Emaim Jamil. I want to extend his greetings
Speaker 9: and his appreciation and he would say, I Salamu a
Speaker 9: leako to everyone, and that's how I begin, and I
Speaker 9: begin in the name of Allah the most Merciful.
Speaker 2: Soon after she and Rap began their relationship, the FBI
Speaker 2: contacted her sister.
Speaker 5: Karama's family were part of a.
Speaker 2: Black power group and they had been arrested. The FBI
Speaker 2: tried to make a deal with Kareema.
Speaker 9: They wanted me to tell them where my husband might
Speaker 9: soon to be husband, where he was traveling. And they
Speaker 9: told me at that time, well, if you help us,
Speaker 9: will drop the chargees against your sister and her husband.
Speaker 9: And I said, well, you know they were frayed, so
Speaker 9: I'm not even going to go there. I'm not going
Speaker 9: to cooperate. Five years later, my husband is still saying
Speaker 9: he could never figure out whether I had cooperated or not.
Speaker 9: He's still telling me that, right.
Speaker 2: It's sort of a dark joke, but also an ugly
Speaker 2: thing to have between a couple. Sister Karma said that
Speaker 2: when Rapp was a target of the FBI, the bureau
Speaker 2: harassed both of their parents so intensely that her father
Speaker 2: dropped dead in the street after some officials visited him
Speaker 2: in his job. A month later, a Mamjimialsma died and
Speaker 2: four months after that, Sister Karima's mother died. And let's
Speaker 2: not forget the car bomb.
Speaker 9: It brought out a family closer and closer to him.
Speaker 9: Why they demonstrated the extent and the degree that they
Speaker 9: will go to divide family.
Speaker 2: After a Mam Jamil was convicted, Sister Karma filed a
Speaker 2: Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI. It told
Speaker 2: her that they had twenty one thousand, six hundred and
Speaker 2: forty nine pages of records potentially responsive to her request.
Speaker 2: Twenty one thousand, six hundred and forty nine. Maybe at
Speaker 2: one point there had been even more records on a
Speaker 2: Mam Jamil, but the FBI said many were damaged in
Speaker 2: a flood.
Speaker 5: Anyway.
Speaker 2: Two years later, after Sister Karma submitted their request, the
Speaker 2: FBI turned over almost seven hundred pages.
Speaker 5: When I look through the.
Speaker 2: Documents, there were two things I saw that suggest the
Speaker 2: FBI was at least linked to the shooting of Deputy
Speaker 2: Kinchin and Deputy English. I don't mean they somehow orchestrated
Speaker 2: the thing. What I mean is that the FBI, they
Speaker 2: were up in the mix. First, there were three handwritten words.
Speaker 2: It was placed remember how when a Mam Jmial was
Speaker 2: captured in Lowndes County, Alabama, an FBI agent named Ron
Speaker 2: Campbell and kicked and spit on him. Campbell had a
Speaker 2: troubled history with the Bureau. Was accused of shooting an
Speaker 2: African American Muslim in the back of the head and
Speaker 2: planting a gun at the scene in Philadelphia. While Campbell
Speaker 2: was chasing a Mam Demial, he fell in the swamp,
Speaker 2: he'd say later, and was on his own for at
Speaker 2: least a few minutes. During the trial, the defense called
Speaker 2: Campbell to testify. Here's a ma'am Jamil's lead defense attorney,
Speaker 2: Jack Martin.
Speaker 8: We knew that Campbell was willing to plant out as
Speaker 8: he was a corrupt FBI agent. The gun was not
Speaker 8: on at the time he was arrested. It was supposedly
Speaker 8: found later, and they found the gun on the ground.
Speaker 8: I wonder why they didn't find the grun in the
Speaker 8: first place.
Speaker 2: I said this earlier, but I'll say it again. We
Speaker 2: contacted Campbell, but he didn't agree to an interview. An
Speaker 2: internal investigation cleared Campbell in that Philadelphia case and he
Speaker 2: was never charged with anything related to it. And we
Speaker 2: don't have any evidence Campbell was a corrupt agent. That's
Speaker 2: just what Martin thought. After a man Jimial was captured
Speaker 2: that same night, a sergeant on the dog tracking team
Speaker 2: found a nine millimeter pistol near the edge of the woods.
Speaker 8: Why would ala mean if you had this shootout in
Speaker 8: the lad with his gun, had brought it with him
Speaker 8: to Alabama, why wouldn't he just.
Speaker 5: Get rid of it?
Speaker 2: The document's sister Karima got from the FBI. They included
Speaker 2: handwritten notes of a debrief with the sergeant on the
Speaker 2: dog tracking team, and the notes from the FBI said,
Speaker 2: apparently paraphrasing the sergeant about the gun, that it was
Speaker 2: placed like maybe the sergeant told the FBI that it
Speaker 2: looked like the pistol had been planted. That one handwritten
Speaker 2: note it supported the argument that the FBI conspired to
Speaker 2: get a mam Jamil convicted. We tried to ask the
Speaker 2: sergeant about this, but he didn't agree to an interview.
Speaker 2: Law enforcement found another gun in the woods too, a
Speaker 2: Ruger Many fourteen rifle. Like with the pistol of mam
Speaker 2: Jamial's fingerprints weren't found on the rifle. Both guns were
Speaker 2: ultimately linked to a mam Jamil in the shooting.
Speaker 5: But you know, like I've.
Speaker 2: Said before, ballistics analysis linking a specific gun to a
Speaker 2: specific bullet, it has no basis in science. But if
Speaker 2: the guns were placed, were they identical models that law
Speaker 2: enforcement could have gotten anywhere? Were they brought all the
Speaker 2: way from Georgia. Attorney Martin has a theory for that.
Speaker 8: It only would be plausible if some ount know of it.
Speaker 8: The undercover agent for the FBI, whoever collected the gun
Speaker 8: in Atlanta or got a gun that matched the situation
Speaker 8: and brought it to Alabama.
Speaker 2: Basically, Martin is saying someone somehow connected to the FBI
Speaker 2: who was in and around the mass Jed at the
Speaker 2: time of the shooting, they helped execute a frame job.
Speaker 5: And so that brings me.
Speaker 2: To the second thing in the documents that sister Karima
Speaker 2: got from the FBI proof the bureau was surveiling a
Speaker 2: Mamjamial just days before the shootout on March sixteenth, two thousand.
Speaker 2: The documents are heavily redacted, but I can see that
Speaker 2: they include regular reports and surveillance of a mam Jamial
Speaker 2: and the mass Jed, and the surveillance actually appeared to
Speaker 2: escalate in the months before the shootout.
Speaker 5: Let me start at the beginning.
Speaker 2: March nineteen ninety eight, during two hours of surveillance, the subject,
Speaker 2: a Maam Jamil, was not observed. April ninety eight, agents
Speaker 2: drove through the West End and saw a Mam Jmil
Speaker 2: standing on the deck behind his corner store across from
Speaker 2: the mass Gen. February nineteen ninety nine, a confidential source
Speaker 2: told someone at the FBI a piece of information significant
Speaker 2: enough that it was shared with FBI headquarters, and the
Speaker 2: surveillance appeared to intensify. April ninety nine, an agent saw
Speaker 2: a Mam Jamil unload something from a dark green Ford
Speaker 2: Explorer with and this is noted in the report dealer tags.
Speaker 2: The next month, a mam Jamil was pulled over in
Speaker 2: that Ford Explorer because he was driving with dealer tags,
Speaker 2: and then arrested for allegedly driving a stolen vehicle. Then
Speaker 2: there were FBI reports in May, June, July, and August
Speaker 2: of ninety nine, all redacted. In October there's another long report.
Speaker 2: It describes a Mamgmil as the leader of a network
Speaker 2: of masters in the US that are quote involved in
Speaker 2: violent crimes and gained their funding from countries in opposition
Speaker 2: to the philosophical.
Speaker 5: Standing of the United States.
Speaker 2: Alamin is well known to law enforcement authorities as an
Speaker 2: active militant.
Speaker 5: End quote the.
Speaker 2: Philosophical standing of the United States. That sounds to me
Speaker 2: like something you'd expect to find in a coin tell
Speaker 2: pro document from the sixties. In February two thousand, the
Speaker 2: FBI got an updated driver's license vhoto of a mamm
Speaker 2: Jimil from the Georgia State Patrol and on March sixth
Speaker 2: of two thousand, just ten days before the shootout, there's
Speaker 2: a memo with a section at the bottom reporting a
Speaker 2: mam Jmial was charged with failing to appear in court
Speaker 2: on that stolen vehicle charge. It was his failure to
Speaker 2: appear that led to the warrant that Kentin and English
Speaker 2: had with them in the West End on March sixteenth.
Speaker 5: Two thousand.
Speaker 2: Despite all their redactions in the documents, they said a
Speaker 2: lot the FBI could have done work behind the scenes
Speaker 2: to get a mam Jamil arrested in that Ford Explorer.
Speaker 2: They could have had someone running surveillance in the West
Speaker 2: End at the time of the shootout, someone who might
Speaker 2: have helped plan a weapon in the woods. That all
Speaker 2: seemed possible to me. Some of it even seemed likely.
Speaker 2: Now I knew that the FBI is pursued of a
Speaker 2: man Jamil of h rap Brown, what we can call
Speaker 2: a kind of violence against him and his family and
Speaker 2: his community.
Speaker 5: It hadn't stopped at the end of the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: It didn't even stop once he was convicted and placed
Speaker 2: in solitary confinement in Georgia. Because the FBI's reported about
Speaker 2: a Mamjmial while he was in prison, the one that
Speaker 2: labeled him an Islamic extremist. That report helped justify even
Speaker 2: more violence, violence that some might call.
Speaker 5: Soul crushing.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and seven, five years after he was convicted,
Speaker 2: when a Ma'am Jamil was taken out of his cell
Speaker 2: in the early morning, put in the back of an
Speaker 2: suv and driven away from Reedsville Prison in Tattnall County, Georgia.
Speaker 5: He had no idea where he.
Speaker 2: Was being taken. We got you now, he said.
Speaker 5: A guard told.
Speaker 2: Him, I wonder where a Maam Jamil thought he might
Speaker 2: be going when he heard that. It's not something an
Speaker 2: iniminate here. As before being taken to a medical appointment
Speaker 2: or a court date. Now this was much more ominous.
Speaker 2: It had to be worse than solitary confinement in Georgia's
Speaker 2: toughest prison, where Ma'am Jamil had already been. Did his
Speaker 2: mind turn to the car bomb? Did he think about
Speaker 2: waterboarding Guantanamo? Or did he trust his government to follow
Speaker 2: the rule of law?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: An airport about a three hour drive away from Reedsville
Speaker 2: was their first stop. A Mam Jamil sat waiting for
Speaker 2: several more hours in the back seat of a van,
Speaker 2: his feet shackled, his hands cuffed and chained to his waist.
Speaker 2: By this time, a Maam Jamil had picked up that
Speaker 2: the Feds had him, but he still didn't know where
Speaker 2: he was going. At five in the evening, now ten
Speaker 2: hours after he was taken out of his cell, he
Speaker 2: complained he was having chest pains and needed to see
Speaker 2: a doctor. When he got out of the vehicle, he collapsed,
Speaker 2: and after some back and forth among the guards, he
Speaker 2: was taken to a hospital. There was an issue with
Speaker 2: his heart. It's not clear exactly what it was, but
Speaker 2: he underwent a procedure under anesthesia. Two days later, a
Speaker 2: Maam Jamil was finally taken onto a plane and flown
Speaker 2: to Oklahoma and then to Colorado. He was driven west
Speaker 2: through the desert.
Speaker 10: There's mountains around it. The area itself is beautiful, but
Speaker 10: it becomes more and more remote until finally you get
Speaker 10: to this place that feels a little bit like the
Speaker 10: end of the Earth.
Speaker 2: Laura Rovner is an attorney and one of the few
Speaker 2: people who has spent time inside the federal prison where
Speaker 2: Maam Jamil was taken in Florence, Colorado. The place's full
Speaker 2: name is United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, but it's
Speaker 2: known as ADX Florence, a supermax prison considered the most
Speaker 2: secure in the world. The Georgia Department of Corrections had
Speaker 2: requested that the federal government take custody of a. Maam Jamil,
Speaker 2: citing the FBI's finding that he was an Islamic extremist.
Speaker 2: Laura the attorney. She teaches law at the University of Denver,
Speaker 2: where she runs a civil rights clinic. She took on
Speaker 2: her first client from ADX Florence in two thousand and six,
Speaker 2: suing the government over the conditions there.
Speaker 10: With her students help, and then the students and I
Speaker 10: went on to represent a number of other people. And
Speaker 10: then the more work that I did, the more it
Speaker 10: became apparent how necessary it was and how really unspeakably
Speaker 10: bad the conditions were.
Speaker 2: About three hundred Americans and foreign citizens are incarcerated at
Speaker 2: ADX Florence. Joaquin al Chapo Gusman, the former drug lord
Speaker 2: from Mexico known for his brazen prison escapes, one of
Speaker 2: the Boston Marathon bombers, men involved in the bombing of
Speaker 2: the World Trade Center in nineteen ninety three, and at
Speaker 2: least nine members of al Qaeda. Those are just some
Speaker 2: of the most famous in the federal system. After nine
Speaker 2: to eleven, a disproportionate percentage of Muslims, by one estimate,
Speaker 2: seventy percent were incarcerated at high security prisons.
Speaker 5: The federal government.
Speaker 2: Opened EIGHTYX Florence in nineteen ninety four. Laura told me
Speaker 2: that as the prison population in the United States grew
Speaker 2: dramatically during the eighties and nineties, prisons, as you might expect,
Speaker 2: became overcrowded, sentences were longer, inmates grew more hopeless, and
Speaker 2: they became more violent. The idea behind opening the supermax
Speaker 2: facility was to isolate potentially violent inmates ad X Florence
Speaker 2: looks like a one or two story red brick building
Speaker 2: that's built into the side of a hill. It's sort
Speaker 2: of unassuming on the outside except for the circles of
Speaker 2: barbed wire and the watchtower. When AmAm Jamil first arrived there,
Speaker 2: he might have felt like he was being taken underground,
Speaker 2: and it probably would have felt disorienting. There are a
Speaker 2: few windows and little or no natural light.
Speaker 10: In terms of what people's experiences like, kind of on
Speaker 10: the way they are entering it, I think people are
Speaker 10: are generally afraid, not knowing what to expect, not knowing
Speaker 10: if they're going to be there forever or if they're
Speaker 10: going to have any ability to get out eventually.
Speaker 2: A mam Jamil would have been taken to his own cell.
Speaker 2: Everyone in ADX is in solitary confinement. The atmosphere is clinical, cold, austere,
Speaker 2: the way a mam Jamil put it. If Reidsville Prison
Speaker 2: was run by the KKK, ADIAX Florence is run by Nazis.
Speaker 2: He had been in solitary confinement in Reidsville Prison too,
Speaker 2: but the conditions at ADAX Florence they were more profoundly isolating.
Speaker 2: The prison seems designed to sever a person's access to
Speaker 2: an influence on society. If part of what we humans
Speaker 2: are doing as conscious beings on this earth is acting
Speaker 2: on impulses from somewhere deep down to shape the world
Speaker 2: around us. Adix Florence walls off those deeper portions the
Speaker 2: souls of people. The religious might say, with thick, thick concrete,
Speaker 2: some souls are just too dangerous. Each individual cell is
Speaker 2: eight feet by ten feet, about three steps to get
Speaker 2: from one side to the other. The walls are white
Speaker 2: or grayish green. There's a cement platform bed, a shower,
Speaker 2: a cement desk, a port cement stool in front of
Speaker 2: the desk, and a TV. The cells have solid doors
Speaker 2: that limit communication with anyone outside. Five days a week,
Speaker 2: a Mammed Demal was able to spend an hour outdoors.
Speaker 2: He was taken fully shackled to what Laura describes as
Speaker 2: an empty swimming pool with cages dropped in it. The
Speaker 2: view from inside the cages more concrete. A Mammed de
Speaker 2: Meal could see the sky, maybe a plane flying overhead,
Speaker 2: but nothing of the landscape, not even the mountains he
Speaker 2: would have passed when he was transported to the prison.
Speaker 10: There are people who have talked about going out to
Speaker 10: those exercise cages and you know that somehow, there some
Speaker 10: miracle of nature, some little blade of grass was growing
Speaker 10: up under the cement, and you know, some of the
Speaker 10: people who were in the cages at different times were
Speaker 10: able to see it, and we're just so excited by
Speaker 10: it because it was the only nature that they had seen.
Speaker 10: I mean, you don't see anything out your window except cement. Also,
Speaker 10: and you know, talked about the cruelty of one of
Speaker 10: the staff coming and just pulling out this, you know,
Speaker 10: one little blade of grass, and it's just so incredibly
Speaker 10: evocative and symbolic to me of what the space is like.
Speaker 2: AmAm Jamil can make two or three fifteen minute calls
Speaker 2: each month. Sister Karma and their youngest son, Kyrie, they
Speaker 2: came to visit him much less frequently in Colorado than
Speaker 2: they had in Georgia. Reidsville Prison is two hundred miles
Speaker 2: from Atlanta. Eighty X Florence is fourteen hundred. On the
Speaker 2: days that sister Karima and Kyrie did come to ADX Florence,
Speaker 2: a Mam Jamil was taken to the visiting area and
Speaker 2: he sat across from them, still handcuffed and shackled, able
Speaker 2: to speak to them through plexiglass. The visits lasted about
Speaker 2: six hours. One day, Laura was also in the visiting
Speaker 2: area to speak to a client and she caught a
Speaker 2: glimpse of a man, Jamil.
Speaker 10: He smiled and waved when he saw me. I mean,
Speaker 10: I don't think he knew who I was, but you know,
Speaker 10: I sort of smiled and waved back. He if you're
Speaker 10: not there officially to visit a particular person, you can't
Speaker 10: have any communication with them. So there was no question that,
Speaker 10: you know, like I could have gone over or spoken
Speaker 10: to him or done anything like that. I mean, I
Speaker 10: was worried that I would potentially get in trouble even
Speaker 10: for doing the wave, But it just was a bright,
Speaker 10: open smile that he gave me in a friendly wave,
Speaker 10: and it just, I don't know, it was just nice
Speaker 10: to see him.
Speaker 2: AmAm Jamil's body suffered because of conditions at the supermax.
Speaker 2: Laura said that many people incarcerated there deal with high
Speaker 2: blood pressure, vitamin D deficiencies, mobility issues, and they can
Speaker 2: even lose their long distance vision because they so rarely
Speaker 2: need to focus on anything far away. Laura worries about
Speaker 2: all of that, but when I spoke to her, she
Speaker 2: seemed more concerned about the psychological effects of being incarcerated
Speaker 2: at ADX Florence. People with mental illness when they enter
Speaker 2: the prison, they get sicker, some develop mental illness once
Speaker 2: they get there. And then there are the people who
Speaker 2: Laura can see are damaged but maybe not diagnosed. They
Speaker 2: can't make eye contact or stay focused, and they're over
Speaker 2: one or exhausted by conversations.
Speaker 10: I think there's something particularly insidious about solitary that, in
Speaker 10: order to survive that, you're sort of trained to not
Speaker 10: need social contact anymore and everything that comes with that,
Speaker 10: And so if you sort of get good enough at it,
Speaker 10: it then becomes hard to do it again when it's
Speaker 10: not required. This idea that like you sort of go
Speaker 10: from craving it to almost being sometimes unable to tolerate
Speaker 10: it at.
Speaker 5: All and craving human contact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you've gone as far as using the word
Speaker 2: torture to describe to practice. Is that something that you
Speaker 2: still that you still believe?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 10: I think when people think about torture, I think they
Speaker 10: think about things that seem much more obvious in terms
Speaker 10: of physical manifestations. So, you know, we don't sanction pulling
Speaker 10: out people's fingernails, But the mental harm and anguish that
Speaker 10: solitary confinement produces in people is just as real, and
Speaker 10: almost to a person. The folks that I have talked
Speaker 10: with who are in solitary would trade it in an
Speaker 10: instant for whatever physical punishment the state would want to dispense.
Speaker 10: Every one of them has talked about how much horse
Speaker 10: this is.
Speaker 2: The federal courts haven't agreed with Laura that solitary confinement
Speaker 2: and ad explorence is cruel and unusual punishment. The practice
Speaker 2: continues today, mostly unabated. Talking to Laura and looking closely
Speaker 2: at Adax, Florence, studying the concentrated isolating violence there, I
Speaker 2: wonder if part of the reason that we citizens can
Speaker 2: stomach the government carrying out violence on our behalf is
Speaker 2: that we imagine that it stops with the person being punished,
Speaker 2: like the harm to the deserving person is done and
Speaker 2: there are no ripple effects. But this stuff, whether it's
Speaker 2: Jimcrow sheriffs or FBI surveillance round from a semi automatic rifle,
Speaker 2: or solitary confinement, it stays with a person etched as memory.
Speaker 2: It stays within a family as loss. It stays within communities,
Speaker 2: within societies, within countries, passed back and forth. If we
Speaker 2: believe that they keep the public safe, we must harm
Speaker 2: some people. Are we accounting for the ways that violence
Speaker 2: begets more violence? All of this, I realize now was
Speaker 2: roiling beneath the surface that night on March sixteenth, two thousand.
Speaker 2: Some prisoners at ad Ex Florence have a path to
Speaker 2: be transferred out to less harsh facilities, but it seemed
Speaker 2: that because of man Jimil was technically a state prisoner,
Speaker 2: that wasn't a possibility. He seemed to be trapped at
Speaker 2: this prison at the end of the earth until his death,
Speaker 2: unless maybe a new piece of evidence was found, something
Speaker 2: that proved someone else shot the deputies.
Speaker 3: I've gotten away with murder for real.
Speaker 9: Yeah, some people say, man, you get away with murder.
Speaker 8: I've literally gotten away with murder.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I don't help all.
Speaker 8: The wood.
Speaker 2: That's on the next episode of Radical. Radical is a
Speaker 2: production of Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV, and iHeart Podcasts. Radical
Speaker 2: was reported and written by Johnny Kaufman and me Mosey's Secret.
Speaker 2: Johnny Kaufman is our senior producer. Sheba Joseph is our
Speaker 2: associate producer. Editing by Eric Benson, Johnny Coufman, Emily Martinez
Speaker 2: and Matt Cher. Fact checking by Sophie Hurwitz, Kaylin Lynch
Speaker 2: and Layla Dos. Original music by Kyle Murdoch and by
Speaker 2: Ray Murray of Organized Noise. Sound design and mixing by
Speaker 2: Kevin Seaman. Recording by Ewan Leed trem Ewen and Sheba Joseph.
Speaker 2: Campside Media's operations team is Doug Slaywan, Ashley Warren, Eliah Papes,
Speaker 2: Destiny Dingle and Sabina Merra. The executive producers at Campside
Speaker 2: Media are Josh Dean Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Cher.
Speaker 2: For Tenderfoot TV, executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay.
Speaker 2: The executive producer is That iHeart Podcasts are Matt Frederick
Speaker 2: and Alex Williams, with additional support from Trevor Young,