The son and supporters of onetime Black liberation soldier Imam Jamil Al-Amin refuse to watch him die. They are fighting to get him emergency medical treatment in federal prison now.

As a soldier in the Black liberation movement, he was known as H. Rap Brown, a bold defender of freedom, justice and equality who earned the enmity of the U.S. government, which prominently placed him on its infamous list of domestic enemies.

Today he is Imam Jamil Al-Amin, a man who has never abandoned the struggle, who has faced unjust conviction and incarceration for over 20 years and who is now in a fight for his life, say his lawyers and supporters.

“We want his freedom, right? It’s like that’s what we’ve been fighting for all these years. But right now the priority is transfer him to a hospital, allow him to get the medical treatment he needs,” said Maha ELKolalli. She and Kairi Al-Amin, the imam’s son and attorney, are on his pro-bono legal team.

“As far as my father’s health goes, it is deteriorating relatively rapidly. We’re dealing with a situation now where we’re in real time watching the system murder my father,” said Kairi Al- Amin. He and Atty. ELKolalli provided an update on his plight Dec. 29 during an Islamic Circle of North America social justice live stream over YouTube hosted by Imam Khalid Griggs.

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Imam Al-Amin, then known as H. Rap Brown, was a leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and the Black Panther Party. He was a revolutionary targeted by police, prosecutors, the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover’s Counterintelligence program, which infiltrated, set up and destroyed Black leaders and movements over decades.

A history of freedom fighting and government targeting 

During the 1960s and 1970s, he chaired SNCC, organizing in the South against segregation and for voting rights. A leader of the Black Panther Party, he demanded justice for Black and oppressed people, and condemned U.S. evils at home and abroad.

After years of being hunted by federal authorities, local officials and prosecutors, he served five years in a New York prison, where he converted to Islam, taking the name Jamil Abdullah Al Amin. Upon release, he moved to Atlanta, setting up a mosque in the city’s West End and organizing against violence, prostitution and crime.

He also promoted gang peace, prison reform and progressive activity among Blacks and Muslims, including standing up for Bosnian Muslims facing genocide and Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

It was in the West End that he was accused of fatally shooting one and injuring another Fulton County deputy while facing some minor charges. He was convicted in 2000 of murder, despite another man confessing to the crime.

“Otis Jackson in a nutshell is the man who’s been confessing to this murder for the past 24 years, since day one. He’s been attesting to the fact that he committed these crimes, signed affidavits. He called and told the FBI, did an interview with them.

He’s testified now on video on the stand in another trial about doing this,” said attorney Kairi Al-Amin. “And not only that, he matches the description that the surviving officer gave. He had the bullet wound in his shoulder that the surviving officer said that they put in him.”

There is also another person of interest, he said, declining to provide more details.

“With evidence supporting Al Amin suppressed during his trial, which his lawyer claims would have proven his innocence, Imam Jamil Al Amin’s defense team and family have been trying to start a new and fair trial to prove his innocence,” said the Islamic Human Rights Commission.

Though convicted of a state crime, the imam served time in a federal Supermax prison in Colorado through an agreement where Georgia pays to have state inmates housed in federal institutions. Pressure led to his being moved to a federal penitentiary in Tucson, where he is held far from his family and suffers today.

“The healthcare that they’re providing is subpar at best, and even the facility … they’re aware that they’re unable to provide adequate healthcare as the notes say in his medical history, medical report that we just recently pulled,” his son said.

The 81-year-old imam’s medical issues include cancer, problems with his eyesight, blood clots in his legs, using a walker and massive swelling in his face, Kairi Al Amin explained.

“He had a baseball size knot in his face and I’m just glad we were able to get that picture out to the public because saying is one thing, seeing it is another. They claim that they took him to the hospital for that knot,” he continued. But after talks with his father Dec. 29,  the son said Imam Al Amin hasn’t seen a doctor since November.

“No hospital in America is going to see a human being walk in with a baseball on their face and tell them, ‘well, you should see another doctor in two months.

Maybe they can do something about that.’ And that’s essentially what they’ve done to my father, not essentially that’s exactly what they’ve done to my father,” he added. Pressure from supporters moved the appointment with doctors up, but it’s still in January.

A clear medical emergency

According to his son and Atty. ELKolalli, the growth has increased, leaving the imam unable to eat solid food, unable to see out of one eye, and having difficulty hearing.

The growth is hard and also swollen, so even draining it, which has not been done, would ease some suffering, they said.

They are pushing for his transfer to a federal prison in Butner, N.C., which has a hospital. “We want him free because he didn’t do this. But we also have to make sure that while they are holding him, that he’s being cared for adequately and that also is not being done,” said Kairi Al-Amin.

“Last I spoke to him; he was eating noodles if he was desperate for solids and that was really all he could take in. And instead of providing him with proper medical treatment at a hospital facility, they’re giving him Ensure,” said attorney ELKolalli.

Ensure is a liquid protein supplement. “Living on Ensure and noodles and not being able to take anything else is definitely making him weaker and it’s making it more difficult for him to walk.”

Another lawsuit was filed in federal court charging violations of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The lawyers also said the Innocence Project has taken up his case and Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis’ conviction integrity unit has been looking at the case.

“Unfortunately you see that Cointelpro still lives, it’s alive and well and kicking. There are things that happen that you just kind of sit back and you say, ‘oh wow, this is interesting how this is playing out.’ This is really just a simple process of transferring this man to a hospital,” Atty. ELKolalli observed.

“We want to see an immediate transfer, we want to see immediate medical treatment. We want people to make the calls and send the emails. I know that there were so many people who were asking for can the president pardon him and there’s all this confusion, right?” she continued.

“As far as the president pardoning him, that’s not an option because he’s not federal, he’s in the custody of the federal government, but he’s a Georgia state prisoner, so the president does not have the authority,” said attorney Maha ELKolalli.

Supporters of the imam are producing a documentary they want to have Netflix stream. It’s their fundraiser and an extensive audio interview has been completed, said his son. The hope is the project will be completed by next summer and ready for resubmission to Netflix.

“Our last campaign for this particular health situation has done well over 1.5 million impressions across all the platforms of people who have been involved in helping us push it. So that’s our biggest campaign to date. But still, we need to be a trending TikTok topic and a trending hashtag on Instagram,” he said.

Nonstop U.S. government plots

The FBI targeted the imam from the 1960s under Cointelpro, where he was named as a target by notorious FBI director Hoover, said attorney ELKolalli.

“And they continued to target him through the ’70s, 80s, 90s  until they finally got this arrest and it stopped,” she added.

Where the lawyer once thought 44,000 pages of FBI documents covered the imam, it now looks like the number is closer to 99,000 pages of FBI documents.

“We glorify Dr. King and Malcolm now, but in their lives, they were also demonized, right? Dr. King is honored now, but he was definitely on the list and targeted,” said attorney ELKolalli.

Imam Jamil Al Amin is still with us, she added.

“We all are indebted to him. So, silence really is just not an option for anybody who we stand upon his shoulders and he fought for us. Silence is not an option.”

For more information about the campaign to support Imam Jamil Al Amin visit, freeimamjamil.com.

Naba’a Muhammad is editor-in-chief of The Final Call newspaper. He can be reached via www.finalcall.com and [email protected]. Find him on Facebook. Follow @RMfinalcall on X and Instagram.