>From: "KSDA *" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: BRC: Statement On Diallo Murder
>Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2000 15:56:12 PST
>
>Network Africa - Sweden (NAS)
>
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>STATEMENT ON DIALLO MURDER ACQUITTALS
>____________________________________________________________________
>
>The Following is a Press Release/Statement from the Black Radical Congress
>
>Black Radical Congress (BRC)
>For Immediate Release
>February 28, 2000
>Contact: Bilal Ali, 323-733-2107, 626-716-7959
>Ashaki Binta, 404-768-8801, 770-331-5818
>
>The Black Radical Congress Condemns the Acquittal of Four Police Officers
>in the Murder of Amadou Diallo
>
>The acquittal of four police officers in the vicious and inhumane murder of
>African immigrant Amadou Diallo on February 25th must be vigorously
>condemned, and exposed as a license for continued police terror in Black
>and poor communities across this country. Brother Diallo was only 22 years
>old, a native of Guinea, West Africa.
>
>The Black Radical Congress calls on all BRC Local Organizing Committees,
>grassroots and community organizations, social justice organizations,
>unions and workers rights groups, the Black press and community and
>political activists world-wide to issue press statements, pass leaflets,
>speak-out, organize demonstrations, meetings and actions to condemn and
>expose the unjust acquittals. We should join and/or send letters of support
>for the ongoing demonstrations occurring at this moment in New York to
>protest the unjust verdict.
>
>The Diallo murder and the acquittal of the four officers who shot more than
>40 times at Brother Diallo, massacring him with 19 bullets, demonstrates to
>the world community that Black life, poor life, and the innocent are
>worthless and expendable in U.S. society.
>
>Racist police terror against the Black community has clearly been on the
>rise in the last decades of the 20th century and ominously pushes these
>historic acts of state condoned racist violence and terror against our
>community into the 21st century.
>
>The conditions of oppression and the historic and systemic injustices
>facing the African American people, forces us to see that only an organized
>political movement for liberation can end the brutality of the so-called
>judicial system, the courts, and U.S. society in general.
>
>Court testimony placed in the record by the prosecutors of the four
>officers suggested a police cover-up, in that Diallo next door neighbor Ida
>Vincent testified overhearing statements below her window just after
>hearing the gun shots saying, "Ok, Ok. We're just going to say this."
>Moreover, there was also testimony that the young immigrant may have been
>shot while lying on the ground. This according to New York City medical
>examiner Dr. Joseph Cohen, who performed the autopsy and who testified in
>the trial. Defense attorneys for the officers provided "expert" testimony
>against the medical examiners findings.
>
>The Diallo murder must be placed in the context of the wider struggle in
>the United States against all forms of racist acts of violence and police
>state terror. In Los Angeles, as the Diallo Case was being tried, more than
>70 current and former police officers have been placed under investigation
>for corruption in which it has been exposed that a conspiracy exists within
>the LAPD for planting evidence, shooting unarmed and innocent people,
>wrongful convictions, drug trafficking, and police cover-ups. One of the
>officers being investigated, Rafael Perez, testified in the investigation
>that "officers in the department's Rampart Division actually gave each
>other awards after being involved in shooting unarmed and innocent people."
>
>Recently, the state of Illinois imposed a moratorium on the state's death
>penalty after it was revealed that 13 prisoners condemned to death and
>facing execution were actually innocent. Mumia Abu Jamal remains
>incarcerated and facing death as a result of the U.S. system of injustice.
>
>Millions of Black and other people of color and the poor languish in the
>jails and prisons across America while the innocent are harassed, beaten,
>and murdered on the streets. We must build a national fight back and a
>national movement to stem the tide of brutality against our communities.
>
>*****
>
>
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