FBI did not request blocking of Abdullah autopsy

(Creative Commons photo by cliff1066™ via Flicker)

DETROIT — The FBI did not ask that the autopsy report of Luqman Ameen Abdullah be kept secret, according to the spokeswoman for the agency’s Detroit office.

“We have not requested that it be held,” Sandra Berchtold told Michigan Messenger.

But Berchtold said she can only speak to the FBI’s shooting investigation, not the Dearborn Police Department’s homicide investigation.

The Dearborn Police Department has yet to respond to several requests for comment.

Abdullah, the former imam of Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, was shot dead following FBI raids in and around Detroit on Oct. 28. He was 53 years old.

A federal complaint alleges that Abdullah was the leader of 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 detailing parts of the two-year FBI investigation.

Asked why releasing the contents of an autopsy report would interfere with a homicide investigation in which it’s already been disclosed that Abdullah’s death was the result of “multiple gunshot wounds,” Berthold demurred.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t answer that question.”

Berchtold did explain that the two investigations are “running parallel to each other but they are two separate investigations.”

The Dearborn police, she said, “is conducting the investigation into the imam’s death,” while the FBI’s inspection team “conducting an investigation into the shooting incident.”

Berchtold said the FBI’s shooting investigation will look into whether agents followed protocol and applicable laws. Even though she describes them as “independent” investigations, that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t some overlapping parts.

“There is some collaboration as far as sharing the crime scene,” she said. “They have to be allowed to interview our people, we have to be allowed to interview their people.”

Berchtold said she doesn’t know when the FBI’s shooting investigation will wrap up.

At least one local activist doesn’t believe that the Dearborn Police is merely trying to prevent any interference into its investigation by blocking disclosure of Abdullah’s autopsy report  to the public.

“That’s a cover up,” said Ron Scott, spokesman for the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality. “I don’t know how to say it much more strongly.”

Scott says he thinks that the Dearborn Police are acting contrary to the First Amendment by withholding the autopsy report.

“They want to determine now what the public has the right to know about in terms of a shooting where a man was shot 18 times?” Scott asked. “Give me a break. This is a joke. This is a farce.”

According to Berchtold, Dearborn police officers were not in the Dearborn warehouse where Abdullah was killed, but instead on the perimeter.

Scott also weighed in on the allegation that Abdullah may have been handcuffed either before or after he was killed.

“Yes, I think that’s significant,” he said. But he suggested that this may not be an uncommon occurrence.

“I have concerns but I know the police do this kind of thing all the time,” Scott said. “Officers sometimes will put handcuffs on dead people. They do it. And that just points to the culture of police agencies in terms of how they dehumanize individuals.”

Berchtold wouldn’t go into any detail regarding if or why Abdullah may have been handcuffed prior to arriving at the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s office, but she did speak generally to how agents operate in such situations.

“I can’t comment on whether the imam was handcuffed or not. But it is commonplace in an area for security purposes to protect law enforcement,” she said. “When we execute search warrants, when we execute arrest warrants, the first thing is safety for both ourselves and the other individuals surrounding the area.”

She added: “It’s paramount for safety purposes to be able to control the situation and control the activities in a location where there is law enforcement and the public.”

Beyond the particulars of the autopsy report or the handcuffs allegation, Scott sees a troubling new bias playing out.

“This now is a new level of targeting individuals who are perceived as potential dangers to the state, in this particular case African American Muslims,” he said. “You have individuals who are targeted and who are brought out in public primarily because someone may or may not have said something that someone might assume to mean that they have a difference with the government. Well, I have a difference with the government,” Scott added. “A lot of people do.”