Abdullah autopsy kept secret by Wayne County

DETROIT — As activists call for an independent investigation into the death of Luqman Ameen Abdullah, the imam at the center of the FBI’s Oct. 28 raids in Detroit, Michigan Messenger has learned that the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s office will not divulge the imam’s autopsy report.

(Creative Commons photo by Puamelia via Flicker)

Last week, an employee in the medical examiner’s office confirmed that the autopsy narrative was complete. But since then, Wayne County’s legal counsel has instructed the office that the autopsy should be kept secret, according to Tracy Taylor, the office’s Freedom of Information Act compliance officer.

On Monday, Taylor said that the decision was made because of the ongoing investigation being conducted by the Dearborn Police Department, and that a letter from the Wayne County corporation counsel would be sent either Monday or Tuesday explaining the decision. No letter was received.

The decision to withhold the autopsy report will only feed suspicion of the investigation, according to Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“If the autopsy is being suppressed to media and advocates, this would be very disturbing indeed and will raise even more suspicion in regards to the shooting of the imam,” said Walid, also assistant imam at Detroit’s Masjid Wali Muhammad mosque. “Transparency would be the best measure for restoring public confidence in the process.”

Walid and other members of the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights called for an independent investigation into the death of Abdullah on Oct. 30.

Luqman Ameen Abdullah

The death of Abdullah, former leader of the Musjid Al-Haqq mosque on Detroit’s near west side, is only one part of a complex federal investigation into what federal authorities have dubbed a Detroit-based radical Islamic group involved in criminal activity. The U.S. Attorney’s office filed a 45-page affidavit in federal court the day before the raids took place. The affidavit, later unsealed, fleshes out the government’s case against Abdullah and nearly a dozen other targets of a two-year federal investigation.

Michigan Messenger formally requested to inspect the autopsy report Nov. 12, but the request was denied Nov. 24. The denial letter indicated that “the postmortem [autopsy] report narrative is incomplete.”

The report is important, in part, because it could shed light on the allegation that Abdullah’s corpse arrived at the coroner’s office in handcuffs, as autopsy narratives typically include a detailed description of the corpse upon arrival.

The allegation first appeared in a Nov. 5 Huffington Post story written by University of Michigan graduate student Hamdan Azhar, which included interviews with two of Abdullah’s sons. The story paraphrased one of them, Omar Regan, stating “the coroner told him that his father’s body was handcuffed when it arrived.”

Walid said he was also aware of the allegation.

“It’s our understanding from talking with different sources that he was dead at the actual crime scene. If that indeed is the case, then we fail to understand why he would have been handcuffed,” Walid said. “But perhaps he was not dead at the crime scene, which then raises questions in people’s minds like, if he was alive at the scene then why wasn’t he airlifted to the hospital for medical care?”

Walid points to the reported fact that an FBI dog was shot at the scene and taken to a veterinary hospital via helicopter.

“Did a FBI canine get preferential treatment over a human?” Walid asked.

The FBI’s public statement issued on Oct. 28 described the imam’s death this way:

During the arrests today, the suspects were ordered to surrender. At one location, four suspects surrendered and were arrested without incident. Luqman Ameen Abdullah did not surrender and fired his weapon. An exchange of gun fire followed and Abdullah was killed.

The Wayne County coroner, meanwhile, has only disclosed that the cause of Abdullah’s death was “multiple gunshot wounds/homicide.”

Contacted by Michigan Messenger last month, Vanessa Denha-Garbo, a Wayne County spokeswoman, said she couldn’t elaborate on the alleged handcuffing of Abdullah. “Because it’s an FBI investigation, we’re not allowed to confirm or deny that allegation.”

Sandra Berchtold, the spokeswoman for the FBI’s Detroit office, said she couldn’t add much more. “I can’t confirm or deny that,” she said. “Everything that happened with that is part of an investigation, either Dearborn’s homicide investigation or the FBI shooting investigation.”

She added: “I didn’t see the body so I don’t know how the body arrived to the Wayne County medical examiner … we are not briefed on the details of these investigations until they are completed.”