I wouldn’t have thought there was enough left of this old apple for anyone to try another bite, but CAIR – Michigan is taking yet one more chomp out of the death of Imam Luqman Abdullah.
CAIR attorney Lena Masri is co-counsel on a federal wrongful-death and civil-rights lawsuit filed last Friday on behalf of Abdullah’s estate. Abdullah, was killed by FBI agents three years ago after opening fire during an FBI raid. Abdullah was leader of a radical mosque in Detroit whose “primary mission is to establish a separate, sovereign Islamic state (“The Ummah”) within the borders of the United States, governed by Shariah law.” Last Friday’s lawsuit
is based on an affidavit of Muhammad Abdul Salaam, 48, a Detroit man with multiple criminal convictions who was with Abdullah at the time of the shooting. The suit says federal agents used excessive force to take down Abdullah and failed to give him medical attention after they shot him. In the affidavit, Salaam said Abdullah didn't have or use any gun, and was killed by gunshots as he was trying to protect himself from the police dog. The FBI has said the dog was shot dead by Abdullah, which the lawsuit denies. (“Family of Detroit Muslim leader files suit challenging official story”).
Salaam, according to the federal complaint filed against Abdullah in 2009, “is a devout follower and close associate of Luqman Ameen Abdullah . . . [and] had a significant position of authority within the Masjid Al-Haqq, the Detroit mosque that Abdullah led.”
Salaam also has:
“’at least five prior felony convictions’ from 1977 to 1985, according to the complaint filed by the FBI in October 2009. The convictions included carrying a concealed weapon, larceny and fraudulent activity. He was known as ‘the gun man’ because of his ‘large cache of weapons stored at various residences, including pistols, AK47s, Mini 14s, 45 Commandos, 12-gauge shotguns and other rifles’ the complaint said.”
None of which means he is lying under oath now, of course. We must be fair. But there were at least three other people along with Salaam arrested that day, and none of their affidavits are included, which means Salaam is the best witness CAIR has, and undoubtedly the only one willing to perjure himself in this way. As a general matter, key witnesses who have prior fraud convictions don’t usually help win lawsuits.
According to a report prepared by the Michigan Attorney General after all the numerous other investigations had concluded, Abdullah began the fire fight when he shot the FBI
K-9, Freddy, who had been unleashed onto Abdullah only after Abdullah refused several agent orders to show his hands. Abdullah’s gun that day was a stolen 9mm handgun. The AG reports said:
The 9mm firearm recovered from Abdullah was analyzed by the FBI lab. There were no usable latent prints found on the handgun-a finding not uncommon with firearms. However, the bullet fragments removed from the K-9 were found to be consistent with bullets fired from the handgun and not consistent with those fired from FBI rifles. Further, the three spent handgun casings were positively identified as having been fired from the handgun recovered from Abdullah. A 17-round clip was in the handgun and had 14 live rounds remaining.
It is noteworthy that the ammunition loaded in the handgun was compatible, by brand and caliber, with ammunition later seized from Abdullah’s residence. This physical evidence is consistent with the statements that Abdullah, not the agents, shot the dog.
The AG report also points out that the FBI team were all armed with .223 rifles. All the FBI rounds that hit Abdullah were .223 rifle rounds, and were all accounted for. That left only the handgun rounds that killed Freddy.
We’re aware that the skeptical audience at whom this lawsuit is aimed are more than willing to accept that the FBI brought that handgun with them that day for the very purpose of planting it on Abdullah’s corpse. Such things have been known to happen. That would require, if one takes into account the physical evidence, also believing the FBI shot their own K-9 while “assassinating” Abdullah. That, in turn, requires believing that some sharpshooting agent managed to shoot Freddy with a stolen handgun simultaneously as other agents fired 20 rifle rounds into Abdullah, an event that was established to have lasted not longer than four seconds. This deadeye agent also had to manage to shoot Freddy without putting any tell-tale handgun rounds into the imam, who was allegedly mauling Abdullah. And then one has to believe that Salaam and the other eyewitnesses were spared by the 30 ruthless FBI conspirators and agents-provocateurs to live and tell the tale.
Far-fetched as Salaam’s sworn statements are, the purpose of his affidavit is strictly to prevent government lawyers from getting this suit stopped in its tracks as lacking any factual merit. Because Salaam’s statement on the record contradicts the official accounts (and the evidence), the resulting dispute over the facts will force the trial judge to allow the lawsuit to proceed to a jury. Even if CAIR and Abdullah’s survivors ultimately lose, that still means at least a two-year process full of opportunities for publicity, grandstanding, and CAIR mischief -- and Dawa.
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