From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of Iheartrading.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Our.
Colleague Nola's on Adventures will be returning soon. They call b Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer, Paull Michigan Control Decant. Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. On March sixteenth, two thousand, two police officers were shot in Atlanta's West End. This is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city with many
stories behind it. One of these officers passed away as a result of this interaction, and the other claimed the shooter was one Emm Jamil Abdullah al Amin, the leader of a local mosque and in other times. This man was formerly known as h Rap Brown, leader of the Black Power movement, an honorary officer of the Black Panther Party. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. But was he guilty or was this conviction somehow retribution for
his activism. The new podcast Radical Investigates interrogates these questions and events in a deep dive never experienced before, with the investigative journalist Mosey Secret, who dives through exclusive interviews, government records, countless sources to get to the bottom of the questions inherent in this case. And we are immensely fortunate to be joined with him today to learn more about this story. Mister Secret, thank you so much for coming onto the show.
You're welcome.
Please call me mostly, I do it watch sorry, mostly, It's really good to see you.
Man.
Just for everyone's knowledge, I serve as an executive producer on this show Radical. It's made with Tenderfoot TV. As many of you know, I make shows with that team, and I'm just really proud of the work that's already gone into the show. We are coming up right now on the final episode. Episode eight is coming out very soon, and we just couldn't wait to pick your brain on a lot of the stuff that you've found. I think maybe a good way into this is mostly how did
you come across this story? Initially?
Well, there are kind of two answers to that question, you know. So I'm from Atlanta and I grew up fairly close to the Muslim community. My family converted to Islam when I was a kid. So because he's a community of African American Wislims to Atlanta isn't that large. I was familiar with a man, Jamie Alamine, in his community, and I was also familiar with this case when it happened.
But as you said, you know, that was twenty years ago, and it's not something that has really occupied my mind in the kind of intervening years between the shooting and the production of this podcast. A year or two ago, I was quite randomly introduced to a podcast producer who had already started looking into this case. Again. He had done extensive his name's Johnny Kaufman. He had done extensive public records requests, pulled court documents, and was really kind
of pointing to some questions in this case. And you know, when he told me about this, you know, all these things kind of came back to me from my childhood and I thought, well, you know, I would love to this with you. And it just so happened that he was looking for a host and a reporter. And then you know, like when I left Atlanta, I went off to be a reporter, So it just kind of felt like it was one of these stories that was made for me.
Man. And just if you do live in the Atlanta area, you probably know Johnny's voice from his work with WABE. If you ever listened to the NPR stations in town. That's that's how I recognized his voice. From the first time. I was like, well, I know this guy.
And what synchronicity there must be in that moment, because you know, hearing, as you said, quite randomly hear this story and you, as any member of that community during your childhood, you will automatically know the people that are being referenced here. There's something that really sticks out in in part of this exploration. Could you tell us a little bit about this summer camp you attended in childhood and how that I just think that's such a fantastic way in to the a mom in this community.
Yeah, So, my family converted to Islam from kind of different evangelical faiths actually when I was twelve or thirteen years old, and a Mam Jamil Elamin's community is one of the first that they came into contact with, and I think that there was a period, you know, when they were still kind of finding their footing, trying to figure out how to you know, get their children to understand this new faith or whatever. And somehow my parents learned about this week long camp that a Ma'am Jamil
convened in the North Georgia Woods. And so, you know, just to kind of give you a sense of what kind of kid I was, I was, like, you know, this would have been when I was twelve or thirty teen. I think that I was like, you know, kind of chubby into books, you know, like uh, riding my back around the neighborhood, hadn't really been anywhere without my parents. Let's just say that I was sheltered. And so this
camp for me was was quite intense. You know. It was from this kind of being taken from this kind of sheltered, you know, middle class existence into a fairly kind of intense Black revolutionary ideology and setting. And also and also you know religious, you know, like extremely religious settings.
And so there was you know a lot of emphasis emphasis on making the five prayers a day, which at that time I probably didn't even really know how to make, or I was learning, and there was you know, physical fitness and self defense, and I was kind of thrust into this environment with these kids from the West End, that man Jamil's neighborhood, who I didn't really know. And these were kids who were they were pretty, they were like rough around the edges. They were into stuff I
wasn't into. They were they liked to fight, you know, they liked to cuss, they liked to you know, it was just like a It was an immersion into a world that I wasn't quite familiar with. And you know, as I became older, I began to connect a lot of what I experienced in just that one week with
what that community was. You know, a man Jamil attracted people who were down on their luck, who were returning home from prison, who were anti establishment for one reason or another, and gave them reason to believe in themselves and gave them, you know, a cause that they could
organize their lives around. And so that meant that a lot of the people were, you know, like I said, kind of rough around the edges, but they placed so much faith in him as a leader and to kind of organize and redeem their lives, you know, including sending their children away to be to be groomed by him. So it is a nice little kind of encapsulation of what he represented for folks.
What I'm hearing is that he was he held a tremendous amount of influence in that community at the time with is that correct?
Definitely, I mean influence over even the intimate details of family life. You know, he would help them arbitrate internal disputes. So it was, it was he was considered a leader, both a spiritual leader, but also you know, kind of helped help them, help them organize their lives.
And he had a bit of a He also had a secular community building area too with the with the grocery store, right which as you you paint the scene so beautifully, right, it's just across from the what's what's
the correct Arabic word for mossul masjed. Yeah. So it's seems that this this community leader becomes in some ways an answer for people who are who are searching for, you know, community stability in a way that might not have been available previously in this As we know, this is something that happens often in the United States in one degree or another, because law enforcement so often fails
right and and commits horrific acts. With with this background, we see already a bit of like whitman esque multitudes in one man, because he is he is the he is the leader, He is a beacon for people in the Western community. Yet it seems that the local law, the APD, and and other other authorities don't see him in that way. Could you tell us a little bit about how authorities had regarded the amount before he even arrived in Atlanta.
Yeah, so, ma'am. Jimil arrived in Atlanta in the late seventies. Prior to that, he had been a nationally known figure in the Black Car movement named a Trapp Brown. A trap Brown grew up in Louisiana and Baton Rouge, Louisiana and there suffered, you know, racial violent and oppression under
Jim Crow. As a young man, he kind of gravitates towards the movement and towards organizing, and eventually he ends up in the Black Belt of Alabama helping citizens there organized to register it to vote, and also just helping them to develop their own leaders and push back against
the oppression that they were feeling there. He becomes known as someone who is courageous and fearless and rash, so, you know, like he was doing this work with the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, which was the one of the main activist organizations at the time, and they were organized around principles of nonviolence. But when you were with these folks out in the countryside, who were, you know, miles away from any help and often could suffer the
whims of any type of local sheriff. They often had rifles whatever by their door side to protect themselves because it was going to be a long time before law enforcement came to help them. And so h Rep. Brown goes into these communities and there is this non violent ideology that he's working with, but there was also this He's also telling people to defend themselves. He's also telling people, you know, this is how you use your gun, this
is how you take these people on. And so he people who have been really beaten down he started to build back up, and it was around this rhetoric of self defense. Now you imagine a person like that becomes a bad guy in the eye of law, in the eyes of law enforcement, and he refused to back down
in any confrontation with law enforcement. And so he develops this reputation over a period of years as someone who was against the police, and he did hate the police, and so this, you know, this relationship basically became worse and worse, and you know, by the time he was in his late twenties, he seemed on the FBI Most Warned List for some charges that were trumped up in
various ways. But this but he developed this reputation as someone who really hated law enforcement and was willing to defend themselves, defend themselves with weapons against law horsemen and you know, like that that breaks down this kind of veneer that the cops have is you know, unassailable, and so he was a scary person for them.
Mostly. Did you come across the Rabble Rouser Index from the FBI?
No, I haven't heard of that.
Okay, So this is something that is available right now anybody listening. You can go to the National Archives and you can find the FBI's quote Rabble Rouser Index. It's also known they use the term subversive control in association with this. And there's like two hundred and fifty five documents like PDF documents that have been scanned in stunning reads.
Well it's it's amazing. A lot of it's redacted, but I don't want to read too much of this, but just a little bit of this, because it's a memo from FBI Director j Edgar Hoover, who has played a role in so many stories, including the MLK tapes show that we made last year, and this is just in saying to see this, I'm gonna read it effective immediately. In view of the widespread racial unrest, the Bureau will
maintain a rabble Rouser Index. The index will consist of names, identifying data, and background information of individuals who are known rabble rousers and have demonstrated by their actions and speeches they have a propensity for fomenting racial disorder. And Stokely Carmichael, the person who preceded h Rat Brown as the SNCC chairman. He is like at the top of the list. Stokely Carmichael is like enemy number one when it comes to how the FBI views anyone in this realm.
Right.
It includes a ton of Black Power leaders. It also includes KKK members and Nazi Party leaders, which is really interesting, but it's just I guess it's just to show that the FBI viewed h. Rat Brown as an enemy, a true an enemy in almost a or uh. And I guess I'm sorry, I need to ask a question mostly, but it's just like, what what did you find when it came to how the FBI was either monitoring or what were they watching him in the same way that they were watching Stokely Carmichael.
Definitely. I mean when Quintelpro was was first organized, there were I don't want to get too specific because I might say something that's wrong, but there were a list of names that were included as people who could be considered a black messiah, someone who could one of these rabbel rousers, who could who the black public could could convene around and could ultimately kind of undermine the integrity of the United States. And h Rap Brown was one of those was one of the people whose name was
on that list. And so you know, like we get into there, we we came across some of these documents in our in our reporting and our research, and you begin to see kind of like in close detail how these operations worked and how they could undermine someone's ability
to be effective as a leader. And with with h Rap Brown, what they did was they yes, there was surveillance, but what ultimately slowed him down was kind of like a barrage of charges that were not true, and so they pulled him into the court system in a way where he suddenly had court dates. He certainly had, you know,
was in jail for violating bond. He sorta he suddenly couldn't move around because of the terms of his release and uh, and these charges just accumulated to the to the point where he had to step down as the leader of the student Non Violent Coordinating Committee. And then you know, like so that happens, and in the public's
mind those charges perhaps could be true. We don't really know, but if you look at the long kind of arc of time, all those charges are are are thrown out for various kindsitutional reasons, and so the question becomes why were they brought and there was there some intention or purpose behind that, and in this case, it's quite clear
the answer is yes. And so he's forced underground. This all this kind of like legal assault is a strong word, but this, all these legal actions eventually culminated in this in this car bomb explosion outside of a court court hearing where he was supposed to be in attendance. And it's pretty widely assumed that that car bomb was an
assassination attempt against him. Many believed by the FBI, And so at that point he has to go underground just to protect his life, and his days as an organizer are under are pretty much over, or at least they're undercover at that point.
Yeah, it's like eighteen months, Yes, that disappears, so more than a year something, he's off the grid, underground. And this also what I really appreciate your pointing out here is that in the case of co Intel's approach, it's pretty clear that they were not under the auspices of this program. They were not saying, let's find someone who has committed a crime. They were saying, let's find some let's find a crime to fit on someone because we
find them dangerous. So we could make a very clear argument is an active series of conspiracies not conspiracy theories.
Well, it's nuts. If you look at that index, it is all of the field offices, all the FBI field offices across the contiguous United States, that are keeping tabs on anybody that ends up on that list, so like any anywhere they go, who they meet with, Like, it's it's nuts to see that level of it is surveillance. But again, as you're saying, once you get into the American prison system through the justice system. You are now in that system, and it's so much easier to have
someone get back in it and stuck in it. And I think that's just such a good point, and that is where a mom Jamil Alimine finds himself.
Now we're going to pause here for a word from our sponsor and we'll be right back and we've returned.
I want to talk about this word violence, if you don't mind you you have a great exploration in episode five on the word violence, how we use it the way, like what we apply it to, and how it's actually a much more robust word that can apply to other things, and how how would you apply it to, let's say, the prison system and specifically Alimane's experience.
Yeah, so this exploration started really with this phrase that Jamil Elamine is famous for uttering are actually you know, he said it when he was still a trap Brown and one of his thump speeches, he said violence is as American as cherry pie. And what he meant by that was that America attained its greatness. America attained its position largely through force against human beings, by forcing people into labor, by battling people for their land, et cetera.
Like we know these things, and so as as a member of a group of people that was oppressed, he said, okay, let us let us also take violence into our hands as a means of power. And so that was that's kind of one of the things that we're interrogating in the show, and that's kind of what led to this
exploration of the word violence. And so, you know, I think at some point I just turned to the Oxford English Dictionary and one of the things we came across was this you know, old definition of doctor of of violence that that had that contained more meaning than it does today, and it included, you know, acts against people committed by the state, harm committed by the state, against
the poppy, against the public. And you know, we explored that in this episode Cherry Pie and looking at the terms of Jamille Ellen means imprisonment, how he was held, the degree that they went to take away aspects of his humanity, and whether, you know, like to what extent the public is comfortable with the government committing these types of acts on our behalf, no matter what anyone has been convicted of, do we believe that our public representatives
should inflict that much harm on other people. That's what this what this episode asks, and this episode asks are we to what degree are we allowing the government to commit this type of violence on our behalf?
And to what degree does the public consider itself accountable right in that regard? And I believe it is what during incarceration in Attica that that a trap Brown does convert to Islam, and what we learn about this conversion in the course of Radical and after he after he is gone from Attica where he relocates to Atlanta, Georgia. Now, I think one very crucial fact here is that he is a person who is speaking from firsthand experience on
multiple levels about things. Maybe kids in the West End and have like no growing up and now they're able to speak with someone who is a community leader who was saying, yes, this is real. These conspiracies and problems exist, there are solutions, and I can help navigate. I can
help provide those solutions. We have in Radical extensive interviews with members of the community during this time, and a lot of those interviews, or a lot of the substance of those conversations has never made it to the air before, so I'd love to ask, when you are speaking with folks who have first experience with the.
Mom who have grown up in these times, was there anything people said, or any commonality or even just any singular statement that really stood out to you and stuck with you.
And why I think it was? It wasn't was an idea of you could call it brotherhood or sisterhood or whatever word contains contains both of those things. There were people community, There were people who felt that they could lean on each other and that they loved each other and that they would be there for each other to
kind of navigate the difficulties of the world. And they and it was really kind of this, this this nice thing where they said, Okay, the world may not be organized to to lift us up, but we're going to lift each other up. And and people remember that time quite fondly. The people who I spoke to, uh, you know, and in doing this they were doing they were they had a lot of moories that were that we could not consider normal and that I you know, they wouldn't
that I wouldn't want to engage in. But there they were doing this luntarily, you know, like the the managermil had a lot of control over that neighborhood. You know, they were essentially living under his very close leadership. It wasn't like everybody would want to live under those circumstances. So you did have to give up some type You have to give up a little bit of personal liberty to be in this little utopia. And so I can't
say that that's for everybody. And also over the course of time that sheen, that good feeling did start to diminish. Like you know, things are always changing, and they changed in ways that weren't necessarily for the best. And we explore that in the show.
I'm thinking about Rodney and as you're like driving around with Rodney and just exploring the neighborhood again, and he's telling you all these stories of the violence that he experienced on just a regular basis. And I'm Alosto imagining a perimeter around the mage the or like the area right there was more more or less controlled by the Imam. I'd like that it felt like there was such violence
that existed right outside the door. And speaking of just I'm thinking back when you were when you attended uh that summer camp, right, I have a very limited experience, but I've been to a lot of churches, most of them suburban, middle class churches. I've never been to a church that has a security detail, and it makes me think about, you know, what was going on there. What did you learn about like the security detail.
Yeah, there's a there's a backstory to it. The West End was a pretty dangerous place before Ama Jamil got there. It was known as there are a lot of drug corners where people were buying and selling and using. And those drug corners were pretty lucrative, and so they were defended with violence. And so Jamil Elamine and the people around him come in and start to turn that around.
They established this this mass jid, which is actually in a house in the neighborhood, which is you know, you know, like a grid of criss crossing streets, and so people and he establishes five prayers there, and so people are walking from their homes to this mass jed or house in the neighborhood to pray. And on those walks people
wanted to feel safe. Some of you know, the five prayers, the first prayer is right before sunset, the last prayer is after sunset, So some of those prayers are in the dark, and people wanted to feel safe, and so what they established was this security patrol that would make sure that people walking back and forth the mass Jid
would not be harmed. The people on this team were armed and there were It was understood in the neighborhood that if you violated the the safety of anybody who was who was going to pray that they're consequences.
You know.
There there are emerged questions over the years about the extent of those consequences, and we explore that in the show. It's unquestionable. You can't question that some people lost their lives and around the West End who were drug dealers. You can't really quibble with a life that's lost. It's if someone's gone, they're gone. And so you know how those people came to lose their lives is something that we explore on the show. Is part of the legacy of this neighborhood.
And this again may feel somewhat familiar to a lot of us tuning in today who have lived in communities where where someone makes this argument that says, look, the people who are quote unquote supposed to be providing safety are in fact not doing that. Therefore, we will we will together lift ourselves up and provide that sort of safety without all the you know, the due process, the red tape and so on. At least is how it's
put theoretically. And for folks who have never been involved in that sort of interaction in a community, that may sound that may sound strange, right, that may sound anomalous, But I believe it is important for people to remember this high this situation can occur.
It is not a.
It's not a one off thing in the American discourse.
Well, I guess the question is, was the that security force that was there that existed, It feels to me like a defensive posture, a means of protection, right. I wonder did you find anything where maybe potentially that security force was used more as an offensive thing, or maybe there's a sect within it that was was was that saw itself as a way to crack down on some of the drug dealing and people that they viewed as undesirable.
Perhaps proactively.
Uh, yes, definitely, And uh, you know we're getting we're getting the spoiler material here. But here's the thing that I learned in looking at this story.
If you have a.
Particular approach, let's say, your approach to dealing with the trouble in neighborhood is to arm a bunch of guys and and uh, you know, give them relatively free reign to keep things safe.
That can work for a little while, maybe for a long time, but it becomes difficult to control as people get a taste for that type of power and and uh.
It just becomes difficult to control.
And so.
It tastes for that to power and also that type of money in some cases now and I say that because of this, they were protecting their community from drug dealers. And one of the things that that we hear is it in the beginning, they would they would sometimes you know, come across these guys and they would confiscate their their drugs or whatever, or or maybe they would take the they would confiscate this money. And then at some point, and in the beginning they were flushing the drugs down
the toilet, they were getting rid of the drugs. At some point it becomes well, this is actually money they were flushing down the toilet. What do we do this? And then and then the kind of slow corruption process starts of of of you know, kind of becoming something that is different than your initial ideals. And that definitely definitely happened in the West End, like no question.
But no spoilers. Do you listen to episode seven and eight though, if you're interested in this line?
Uh yes. By the way, we also knew that for everybody to need and as we are recording, the final episode has yet to release, so I can't speak for everybody, but I am. I am on the ride as well. I don't I don't know how the how we conclude yet, but.
When you hear this episode eight will be will be available on Tenderfoot Plus Early. You'll have to wait another week until it comes on.
Hey and full disclosure, I also uh subscribed for early access to make sure that I could be as up to date as possible.
And with that, let's take a quick break here word from the sponsor and return with most secret and we're back.
There's another turn here, and this is not I would argue this is not a spoiler because this is sort of our our next a culmination of some of these factors right of this growing stuff describing the idea of agency leading to Mission Creep, the idea of self empowerment becoming an opportunity in some ways for other behaviors we know that during during his time in Atlanta as a community leader, the mom was was in situations with law enforcement.
I'm thinking of I'm thinking of nineteen ninety nine when it was pulled over in Marrietta, Georgia, Right, that that was one of those It was one of those situations where I think he ultimately gets charged with impersonating a police officer even though he has an honorary badge and the literal mayorrit is like, yeah, I gave it to him.
So we see, what we could argue with a lot of sand is a series of persecution, right, a series of actions that are persecuting this person, the storied activist, at the same time that he is building this powerful community in the West End. Could you could you walk us through, just in broad strokes, what the official narrative is of the March sixteenth, two thousand incident that ultimately led to his arresting conviction.
Yeah, I can walk you through, and we can, and we can start with this with this arrest and cop counting. So, as you mentioned, he was he was pulled over and arrested by some by some cops up there, and you know, he eventually was charged as a result of that stop with driving a stolen car and impersonating a police officer
and then person being a police officer. Part is because when the cops stopped him, he a ma'am Jamil showed this guy a badge and we don't really know what the conversation was, but it seemed there was some type of We think that it's because he wanted to let this officer know that he was like a legit person in the and who didn't kind of deserve any mistreatment. But whatever. He was charged with impersonating a police officer
and driving a stolen vehicle. The car was stolen, and so that initiates some some court hearings for various reasons. A man Jamil did not show up for those court hearings and a warrant was issued for his arrest. This is months before the shooting. So there are sheriff's deputies in Fulton Counties who are Fulton County who were trying
to serve this warrant over a period of time. They're trying to arrest him and bring him in for this charge out in the suburbs, and that's what was happening the night of March sixteen, two thousand two Sheriff's deputies were going around the spots in the West End that a man Jimial was known to frequent trying to serve this bench warrant for failure to appear in this court case. The cops come to the neighborhood looking for a mammal.
They don't find them and they leave. They're in a in a marked car, a Crown Victoria, and they're driving away. There's like a small street there that goes away from Weston Park. They're driving away. In their rear view mirror, they see a car pull up in front of a man Jamil store. So they turn the car around, turn around their squad car to see what who was in
this car that pulled up. So the squad car comes back down the street and the and the car pulled up in front of the store is parked on the street. It's a black Mercedes. So eventually the squad car in the black Mercedes are nose to nose and there's like a you know, you see that, you see the you see a confrontation ing here. So the cops get out of the car, you know, one on each side of the car, and and the man in the Mercedes gets
out of the car. Uh. The cops notice that they cannot see the man's hands, the man who's gotten out of the Mercedes, and they ask him to show his hands. The cops say that the person uh says something that's the effect of of hey, and then pulls a long rifle out of some type of long garment and starts shooting at them. Both cops are hit. One of them runs to a field near the mass did and and UH waits there. Another one of them is killed right
there in front of the car. And so this is the this is the the shooting and the crime that eventually leads investigators eventually UH charge a man Jimmial with you know, after that shooting, he did, he fled. He fled to Alabama to the very location where he had been organizing as as an activist in his young life. A federal law enforcement eventually found him there and the Mercedes, which was riddled with bullet holes, and he was charged and convicted of this crime.
Just knowing that the Mercedes was there at his location where he fled and it did have bullet holes in it is one of those things that you just you hear that and you think, oh, Okay, well, then that's obviously what happened. But it's so much more complicated than that, right, I mean, and especially as you continue exploring the story, you continue, you know, you kind of look, you take a really hard look at the witness statements from the
surviving deputy. There's some really there's a really interesting piece in here about the man's eyes. I can't remember which episode that is, but just specifically this officer who was shot who says, I looked directly into the man's eyes you shot me, and like gets if it is allaman's eyes. The eye colors.
Wrong, so you're gray eyes.
Yeah. There's so many inconsistencies like that that make you, again as a listeners, you're as you're going through this, make you question things. Was there any point where you begin to really question the story and feel like you didn't have a grasp on what occurred, especially when you encounter somebody like Otis Jackson who has a completely different version of the story.
I mean, there were many points where I thought I didn't have a grasp of the story. We're dealing with events that happened twenty plus years ago, in addition to dealing with a lot of secrets, you know, both FBI secrets and secrets from the Muslims in the West End, and so these types of things you kind of wonder in the beginning if you're going to even get to the to the bottom of them. And there were many moments when I thought that I that I that I
could never really figure out what happened. Like you just kind of come to a point where you know, someone says one thing, someone else says another thing, and you you don't really have the means at your disposal to figure out which is which. But we do draw conclusion in the show, and uh, you know, to my surprise actually and to my satisfaction, I think I know what happened, But I don't know if that's going to beat everyone
else's satisfaction. We'll have to see. But yeah, eventually things kind of came into focus in a way that that made sense for me.
Mm well, And just to be clear, this person that we're speaking of, Otis Jackson, had a whole other story where he was, in fact the one who you know shot the sheriff's deputies on that night in two thousand and you can Yeah, it's.
Just really Otis.
You asked me about Otis. So, yeah, so Otis is someone who confessed to this crime pretty soon after it happened. He was a known person around the time of the trial in two thousand and two, prosecution and defense and who over the years has maintained that he's the one who did it. And so you hear something like that and uh, and you he was not coerced in at least it doesn't appear coercon to him making this confession, and so you have to take it seriously, and we did,
and we talked to him. Johnny talked to him, My producer talked to him. And you get any of these things, and you realize that even something like a confession that was not coerced can be actually quite complicated. And that's what we find, you know, in conversation with Otis, And it does what we thought was kind of be a clear kind of direction towards the truth actually was a misdirection.
And it was definitely one of those moments where where I thought I didn't know which way, I didn't know which way was right, you know, like in the in my early days of reporting on the story, I remember the first time I read some of the stuff from Otis. I was like, whoa, this guy definitely did it. And then other points I was like, well, this guy is lying so and it and it and it. Uh yeah, we go. You have to see which way we landed on that on that one, but it was complicated mm hmm.
And and I do want to I do want to point out to one thing that, uh, I find quite impressive is that in this investigation, there is there's this beautiful, like Jedi like objectivity to uh to asking the people with the conflicting narratives. You know, let's let's talk to prosecutors involved in this, let's talk to you know, let's talk to Otis Jackson, Let's learn all sides of this story. And I just want to say I mentally appreciate that
point of sort of way leading on to waigh. You know, because we want to build our we want to build our bricks of logic, right are if thens need to be solid? And it seems like several times we as the audience listening to this are experiencing the same thing. We're like, well, this is definitely oh but wait oh wait, but then what does that also mean? Which I find compelling. I find also it is it brings us to it brings us to the fact that this is not an
historical case and historical footnote by any means. We know the mom is. I believe the mom is currently incarcerated and has I think, gosh, just a few years ago, had an appeal that made it all the way to the Supreme Court. Is that correct?
I don't think that they got certification on the case.
Oh okay, but they went the Supreme Court did decline it is.
I'm pretty sure the Supreme Court declined it.
Yeah, okay. Well, how for people listening now in the case of in the case of this current incarceration, could you tell us a little bit about how the West End community is thinking through this, how they are experiencing, how they are experiencing the case, and is there any active movement to perhaps have him released from incarceration.
So the folks in the West End, there are people who are still organizing, you know, who are still making a campaign to have him released. They are at this point, all of the almost all of the legal options for a man Jamil have been exhausted. All the appeals have been exhausted, all the habeas petitions have been exhausted. His last remaining hope is a division of the Fulton County DA's office called the Conviction Integrity Unit, which reviews possible
instances of wrongful conviction. And so the people in the community are essentially mounting a public campaign to get certain evidence considered by this unit of the DA's office. And so there are people there who are still very much behind a Maam Jamil. But you know, in this podcast, we don't explore their feelings that much because they didn't
want to talk. A man Jamil and his one of his sons still have pretty strong degree of control about control over how this community behaves, and we you know, we weren't allowed to talk to them on the record. So the stuff that I know about, you know, how things are playing in the community, that that's kind of like secondhand in scull Butt, you know, so we weren't able to get anything from them directly. We do have a guy in the show. His name is Balal Suni Ali.
He is he is a Mam gmials. I forgot the exact term that he used, but he is essentially the person who was leading up on the non legal side, who's not a lawyer, the person who's leading up the campaign for mam Gmial's freedom, and he did talk to us, but kind of like beyond him, we don't really have that much of a sense of how things are playing other than you know, like things that are posted on social media.
It makes me think about the influence and maybe loyalty. Yeah, the influence that Alamine had had and has within the community, the perhaps a loyalty to him that some people feel. And it again takes me. It's weird, man, I keep going back to that security detail. I think it's because I'm fresh off listening to episode seven, but it's I want to talk about this person, Shaheed, but I don't want to give too many spoilers. There's an individual that you find, I think via I don't know exactly how
you come across him. But there's another document at play here called the Synopsis of West End Homicides that just looks at specific individuals who were killed in the West End neighborhood over a certain period of time there and in a lot of those individual murders, there are people who are suspected to maybe have played a part, but often it's like there's no evidence linked to this individual
murder case. So this homicide, right and just I don't want to say the police are not investigating each one of those individual cases, you know, with full veracity, because
I'm sure they are. It's just it does seem like not a lot of attention gets paid to the drug dealers that got shot on the corner versus the deputies that were shot right by their car, And I just I just wonder if it makes you wonder about the big picture of this show, and like if are there have you found any big picture answers in your exploration to something like a big question like how do I, as an individual or a leader enact change within an
oppressive system that views me as an enemy? Do you think there's any at least partial answers to that question that you found?
Or why can people take from the show?
Yeah, you know, I found those answers for my self, and I give those answers for myself in the show, but I hesitate to tell other people what the answer should be for them, and that's how I frame it. One of the themes in the show is kind of this man. Jimil was this person who was very hard to define because he meant different things to different people.
He to federal law enforcement, he was this villain who they pursued, but a lot of the things that they based this assessment of him on were either imagined or not necessarily true, or someone was spinning them, or like various types of things. Other people gave him this kind of like heroic sheene. But when you kind of break that down, he was doing stuff in the community that is questionable, and he was leading them in ways that
were questionable. The story that was around him still has this He's still held up in this way that is impactful in people's lives. And you know, what we were dealing with. Essentially, we determined were stories and the power of stories on both sides, and the power of stories for people who are trying to shift narratives about their communities and shift narratives about what their governments and their
leaders are capable of. And as a storyteller and working with this kind of like shifty material, that's kind of what I decided to play with in the end, and that's what that's what the what we do in episode eight.
And as as we noted, as you are hearing this today, folks, the almost the entirety of Radical is out now. Do check it out please. As as we said, we have a mense appreciation not just as just as residents of Atlanta, but as as fans of investigative journalism. We have a
mense appreciation for your work here. And one one of the big questions that I never want us to miss when we talk with journalists of your caliber is where people can find more of your work, not just related to radical but your your work with pro Publica and et cetera and so on times the time. Oh also, I've got we've got to give the flowers here. I didn't mention at the beginning, but everyone mostly is an award winning journalist. By the way. Didn't want to embarrass you on that one.
Yes, okay, I will take this opportunity to say that I was working with a great journalist on this, Johnny Kaufman, who I always want to you know, highlight, because this was as much Johnny as it was me. As you guys know, we have a producer, you know how these things work, like, we were doing this thing as a team, and my work is on my website Mostsecret dot com, which I need to update and refresh. If you have a website, you know how that goes broils on this stuff.
Is still there, so that's a good place. And uh yeah, you know, my name is kind of weird, so if you google my name, a lot of stuff will come up.
To Again, we cannot thank you enough for your time here today. Thank you, bitch. As for our filow conspiracy realists, please do tune in the show available today wherever you find your favorite podcast. What a fantastic show, you know, Matt, we were so lucky to have Mossey on for this conversation. I've got say, I'm sure you felt the same way as longtime residents of Atlanta. A lot of this was was quite familiar.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, very very familiar. One of the most interesting things you can listen to is a bonus episode where Mossy and Johnny Kaufman, the two producers and writers of the show, get together and just talk about finding documents, you know, doing those freedom of information requests and just sifting through the stuff, just so many things. Because you're talking about a person h Trap Brown that goes back to the nineteen sixties right where there are
real FBI files. We're not joking about these FBI files, so many on this individual, and just holding that in your mind and applying that person that they're the way that government sees that person applying it to this person who's now in em maam in Atlanta, and like, how does that influence everything that's getting thrown at him.
Yeah, we didn't get to the Cambridge riots. We didn't. There's so much stuff we didn't get to, but Moussey and his team get to a lot of it. If you'd like to learn more about Cohen Tulpro, please check out our earlier existing episodes on proven Conspiracies on the part of the Alphabet.
Dude, and I'm not kidding, go back and listen to the MLK tapes show as well, because there's some weird parallels there with the same individuals in charge, like in the FBI and just in the mechanisms that are applied to both of these stories. Really fascinating stuff.
And thank you as always for tuning in. Fellow conspiracy realist. We would love to hear your take on this exploration. We'd also love to hear your thoughts on other cases that may have have triggered some similarities for you when you hear this, because as I had mentioned earlier, the thing that might escape a lot of people is that these are not necessarily one offs. These are not necessarily things that exist in a vacuum. So let us know.
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