Sniper Suspect's 'Spiritual' Supporters
By Natalie Hopkinson November 6, 2003
-- For weeks they've sat there -- he in plentiful locks
tucked inside a black mesh Rasta hat, she in a black scarf covering her hair,
ears and neck -- on the back row of the courthouse room where the D.C. sniper
trial is being shown to reporters on closed-circuit television.
They watch the proceedings intently, scribbling notes and
occasionally exchanging discreet whispers, but never mingling with the other
journalists chronicling the fate of alleged sniper John Allen Muhammad. When
asked, they curtly respond that they are from the Underground News Network, but
offer little else.
There are reasons for this. The couple dozen or so
journalists surrounding them each day are the very "vultures who wish to
see John Allen Muhammad hang from the gallows of The Commonwealth of
Virginia," as the pair wrote in last week's Internet account, and a large
part of the reason they drove their white Ford pickup all the way from Florida
to be here.
In monitoring "the so-called professionals that the
masses depend on to deliver the daily news," the Underground News
Network's editor in chief, Ital Iman I, and executive editor and Webmaster
Da.Uru I hope to offer "spiritual support" to John Allen Muhammad,
who they say was chosen by higher forces to deliver coded messages to the
world.
With execution lust raging in this coastal town and hardly a
friend, family member or supporter in sight, Muhammad sure could use the help
-- that is, if he even knows the UNN is out there, waging this spiritual battle
on his behalf.
The sniper shootings were "like a message from a high
priest, this initiation rite to take the world, especially black people, to a
higher level, to get a higher consciousness," says Iman I, who is 46. So
instead of zigzagging through parking lots and ducking behind gas pumps during
the terror spree that left 10 dead last October, he says, Washington area
residents should have been listening to Muhammad's missives railing against
racism, corporate greed and anti-Islam sentiments.
But only the seers can read through the mysticisms that
accompanied Muhammad's mission: The "duck in the noose" phrase that
Chief Moose recited at the snipers' request. The tarot card left at one
shooting. The notes demanding that police call the snipers "God."
That's where "Word is Bond: Essaic Manifesto: The document containing the
Doctrine in support of John Allen Muhammad/John Lee Malvo, " a 35-page
pamphlet that UNN published, comes in. So far, they say, they've sold about a
hundred copies through the Internet and independent bookstores for $23 -- as in
23 days of terror.
After Monday's proceedings, they have agreed to be
interviewed in a sub shop across from the Virginia Beach Municipal Center. They
decline to order anything, even water, as the Rastafarian couple who also
follow some of the teachings of Islam are vegetarians who don't trust food they
have not prepared with their own hands. They are soft-spoken and polite as they
talk about their journey here.
"The mainstream media were not telling exactly what is
going on in the courtroom," says Da.Uru I, who is 30. "They are
saying that they caught Muhammad, but he actually led them to him." Thus
the phrase "we have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose,"
meaning Muhammad would be waiting when police came for him and he would not
run.
It was all in the divine plan.
During the three weeks, Iman I saw other signs. The four gas
stations targeted represented the four big oil companies. The tarot card left
for police was the 13th card of the deck corresponding to death, and it alluded
to the 13-year-old boy shot at the school as a warning to the government that
schools should be places of learning. The numerical links he makes, from
Muhammad's birthday, the ages of the victims, to the dates of the shootings, go
on and on.
"You have two black men who have held the nation at bay
for 23 days," Iman I says. "That hasn't happened since Nat Turner.
Whether they killed them or not, you have to admit that he's an intelligent
man. It's the trial of the century -- it's actually bigger than the O.J. trial."
At the time Iman I started putting the pieces together last
October, he had already been hosting a radio talk show based in Jacksonville
and publishing a newsletter covering American Beach, the historically black
resort town on Amelia Island where he and Da.Uru I live in "a small
commune of nine consisting of two wives, a husband and six children." So
he decided to fold the radio show and newsletter and his interest in the
Muhammad case into a new Web site called the Underground News Network.
Iman I tried to share his revelations with Muhammad soon
after his arrest by mailing some of his writings to the Virginia jail where he
was held, but officials returned them unread, stamped "inappropriate
contact." So Iman I published the "Word is Bond" pamphlet, and
along with Da.Uru I, headed up to Muhammad's April pretrial hearings in Prince
William County.
But they never got that far. En route, police pulled over
their 1998 Ford truck for a traffic stop on Interstate 95 in McIntosh County,
Ga., and arrested them for possession of less than one ounce of marijuana,
which they say they use for religious purposes. But before they were taken to
the jail, they say, officers from several law enforcement agencies swarmed the
car.
During the stop, an FBI agent seized copies of their
"Word is Bond" pamphlet, along with other writings including
"Fire in Dub," "Anatomy of a Revolution" and "Of Prose
and Con," according to a receipt of the seizure that the couple kept.
After being questioned for several hours, they were released on bail. When they
returned to court in June, charges against Iman I (aka Noel Jones) were dropped,
while Da.Uru I (aka Chineka Whitaker) was charged with possession of marijuana
and sentenced to 12 months' probation, suspended upon payment of a $500 fine,
according to court records. They say they are still waiting to get back their
pamphlets.
Iman I and Da.Uru I were outraged enough to send out a press
release called "FBI Targets Rastafari Journalists" -- "Was this
a conspiracy to keep the journalists from the trial of John Allen
Muhammad?" -- but were otherwise undeterred. It, too, was part of the
plan, they say. They drove up to Virginia Beach to cover the trial last month
with hopes of telling their Internet readers the truth about the trial and the
parable of the divine shootings, which will become grist for the next pamphlet.
They live simply and eat inexpensively -- mostly Chinese noodles and seaweed --
and live off the proceeds of their sales of their pamphlets, and their arts,
crafts and jewelry, which they sell at independent shops.
They vow to see the end of the Muhammad trial and that of
his "student," Lee Malvo. They don't condone killing, but believe
Muhammad and Malvo should not receive the death penalty if convicted. They say
racial justice dictates that the names John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo,
"revolutionary black men," get equal billing with white criminal
masterminds such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson and the Son of Sam, who
"have had movies glorifying their sick works."
There hasn't exactly been a stampede to the Web site.
Yesterday morning, the forum on the Muhammad trial had received fewer than
1,800 hits since Sept. 25. But UNN dispatches have been picked up at several
other underground media sites, where in at least one quarter, they've struck a
nerve.
Soon after the Underground News Network began publishing its
trial coverage, criticism came from the Matah Network, an Afrocentric marketing
network co-founded by Ken Bridges, who was shot in the back by the sniper at an
Exxon station in Spotsylvania County. Some Matah advocates regard Bridges as a
"modern-day Marcus Garvey," killed before he could carry out his work
of economically empowering black America.
Some Matah supporters believe Muhammad was under government
mind control and that he killed Bridges in a conspiracy to stifle black
economic power. They posted messages on UNN critical of its theories.
"Believe it or not, there are people who believe that
there is a conspiracy," Iman I says, incredulous. "They feel like
everyone else was killed to shroud the killing of [Bridges], which to me is
absurd."
Ital Iman I, right, and Da.Uru I of Underground News Network
say last year's sniper shootings were "like a message from a high
priest."Ital Iman I, left, and Da.Uru I of the Underground News Network
view other journalists covering the sniper trial as "vultures who wish to
see John Allen Muhammad hang from the gallows."
