By Khalil AlHajal
Saturday, 11.21.2009, 02:26am
Several major rights advocacy organizations sent a letter to the U.S. Justice Department on Monday calling for an investigation into potential civil rights violations commiteed during the Oct. 28 FBI raid conducted in Dearborn in which a religious leader was killed.
Imam Luqman Abdullah, leader of the Detroit-based Masjid Al-Haqq made up primarily of African Americans, was killed during a raid in a Dearborn warehouse where undercover agents lured members of the group in a sting operation involving stolen goods. The groups who signed the letter included the Council of American-Islamic Relations—Michigan, The American Civil Liberties Union—Michigan, the National Lawyers Guild, the Congress of Arab American Organizations, the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice and The Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice.The groups asked for an investigation specifically seeking clarity on nine points in which there have conflicting accounts of what happened that day, including "the number of times Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah was shot, as well as how many rounds were fired at him by the federal agents;" "whether excessive use of deadly force was employed by the federal agents under the circumstances;" whether an FBI canine killed at the scene "was trained and subsequently directed by the FBI agents to attack Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah," and "whether Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah was dead at the time he was handcuffed."
Detroit FBI officials said there is an "independent review team looking at the matter," and that they will not confirm or deny any accounts of the incident until the report is complete.
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