N.J. troopers
face attempted
murder charges
1 KfcN ION, N.J. (AP) - Two
white state troopers were indicted on
attempted murder charges Tuesday
for shooting three black and
Hispanic men on the New Jersey
Turnpike - one of a series of cases
that have stirred a nationwide debate
over racial profiling by police.
John Hogan, 29, and James
Kenna, 28, could get up to 40 years
in prison if convicted on the state
charges.
The troopers are accused of fir
ing 11 shots into a van containing
four young men on their way to a
basketball tryout in North Carolina
in 1998. Two black men and a
Hispanic man were wounded, and
they have filed civil rights and injury
lawsuits against the troopers and the
state.
Hogan and Kenna have said that
they stopped the van because the dri
ver was speeding, and that they
opened fire because the van was
backing up to hit them.
Hogan’s lawyer, Robert L.
Galantucci, said Hogan was struck
by the van on a dark stretch of high
way and had only seconds to
respond. He called the indictment
“politically motivated.”
A message left for Kenna’s
lawyer was not returned.
The shooting triggered protests
and internal investigations that
embroiled the New Jersey State
Police in the controversy over racial
profiling, or the practice of stopping
motorists on the basis of race.
Earlier this year, Gov. Christie
Whitman fired the State Police
superintendent after he said minori
ties were responsible for most of the
state’s cocaine and marijuana traffic.
in June, President Clinton issued
an executive order calling on federal
law enforcement agencies to collect
race and gender data-in all stops and
arrests. Police in several places,
including North Carolina, Houston,
San Diego and San Jose, Calif., have
taken similar measures.
In April, Hogan and Kenna were
indicted on charges of falsifying
traffic-stop reports to conceal the
fact they were stopping a lot of black
drivers.
The following day, the attorney
general’s office issued a report con
firming that traffic stop-and-search
patterns provided evidence of racial
ly discriminatory practices by the
State Police.
Lawyers for Hogan and Kenna
claimed then that the charges were
paperwork mistakes and that the
troopers were being used as scape
goats in the debate over racial profil
ing.
The troopers, who are suspend
ed from the force, have pleaded
innocent to the misconduct charges.
The union representing New
Jersey’s state troopers issued a state
ment calling Tuesday’s indictment
“outrageous and beyond belief.”
“Today a stake was driven
Jhrough the hearts of many men and
women troopers who put their lives
on the line every day to protect the
citizens of this state,” said Ed
Lennon, president of the State
Troopers Fraternal Association of
New Jersey.
Johnnie Cochran, an attorney
representing the men who were shot,
said he was “ecstatic” about the
indictment.
“I’m confident that this is the
first step on the road to justice,” he
said. “I hope that this indictment
will be a deterrent for future injus
tices.”
■----1
Rare collection reveals
other side of Malcolm X
m lain 1A (Af) - l ne only known
collection of Malcolm X’s personal let
ters and notes are on display at Emory
University, and many offer a glimpse of
him as a typical teen-ager who liked to
jitterbug, admired pretty girls and
wanted to be a lawyer some day.
The writings differ from the public
view of Malcolm X as a fiery orator
and advocate of black nationalism.
“They are quite unique,” James H.
Cone, of Union Theological Seminary
in New York, said Tuesday. Cone is the
author of a 1992 book about Malcolm
X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The only other known personal let
ters written by Malcolm X are in FBI
files.
The Emory collection - mostly let
ters and school notebooks written from
1938 to 1955, when Malcolm X was a
teen-ager and young adult - is on long
term loan to the library.
Though not a large collection, the
letters and notes could, change the
accepted yiew of Malcolm X’s early
years.
In his speeches and in his autobiog
raphy, the civil rights leader described
himself as a small time hood who could
barely read before he was converted to
the Nation of Islam in prison.
But the early papers paint a much
different picture. They show the 13- to
15-year-oldJVlalcolm to be an articu
late student who rarely misspelled
words and usually used correct gram
mar. In one assignment, he wrote that
he wanted to be a lawyer, a district
attorney or a politician.
One piece on display is a letter he
wrote while in prison to half-sister Ella
Collins.
t
This being Easter, I thought it
would be nice of me-if I tried to write
you a charming letter.”
In another letter, 16-year-old
Malcolm wrote from Boston to a
friend.
“Sorry I haven’t gotten around to
writing you sooner but I have been very
busy. You know how we traveling men
are. How is everything in Jackson.
Boston’s fine. The place is really
‘jiimpin.’”
Leroy Davis, a professor of
African-American studies at Emory,
said: “Just to see Malcolm’s actual
handwriting set off trembles.”
Malcolm X was born Malcolm
“Harpy” Little in Omaha, in 1925. He
spent a few years in a foster home in the
Lansing, Mich., area after his father
was murdered and his mother was put
in a mental institution. After moving to
Boston at age 16, he got mixed up in
small time street crime. He was sent to
prison for burglary in 1946 at age 21.
During his six-year prison term, he
became a disciple of Elijah
Muhammad, head of the Nation of
Islam. After getting out of prison,
Malcolm adopted “X” as his last name.
In the early 1960s he advocated
black nationalism and was often fol
lowed by government agents suspi
cious of his motives and provocative
views.
As the leading spokesman for the
Nation of Islam, Malcolm X called for
a rigid separation of whites and blacks.
But uTl$64, he broke with the Nation
of Islam, made a pilgrimage <6 Mecca
and declared himself an orthodox
Muslim. He was shot and killed a year
later in New York City. v
' %
Treaty violations threaten
precarious peace in Congo
JOHANNESBURG, South
Africa (AP) - Peace efforts in the
war-torn Democratic Republic of
Congo hit a new snag Monday when a
rebel leader accused President
Laurent Kabila of violating a peace
accord brokered last week and issued
a veiled warning that hostilities^could
resume.
The Congolese Rally for
Democracy, which has been fighting
to depose Kabila since August 1998,
has objected to his decision to
appoint Lt. Gen. Sylvestre Luesha as
head of his armed forces. The deci
sion was announced Friday.
Luesha is an ethnic Mai Mai, who
makes up one of the groups meant to
be disarmed under a peace deal bro
kered in Lusaka last week, the Rally
for Democracy’s chief negotiator
Bazima Karaha said in an interview
Monday. The loose-knit group has
clashed with the rebels during the
civil war.
Karaha warned that if Luesha
were not removed from his post, “We
will carry on and disarm him.”
A letter voicing the objection was
sent to the Joint Military
u
The guns are silent. We believe this should
be the end of the war in the Congo.”
Bazima Karaha
chief negotiator, Rally for Democracy
Commission, which is overseeing the
Congo cease-fire, but no reply had
been received, Karaha said.
“It is a threat. It is a violation.
This man must be disarmed,” he said.
Rival rebel leader Ernest Wamba
dia Wamba told reporters in Pretoria
that he agreed with Karaha that
Luesha was g bad choice, but said he
would not go so far as to tell Kabila
what to do. -
Karaha added that the cease-fire
appeared to be holding.
“The guns are silent. We believe
this should be the end of the war in
the Congo,” he said.
Karaha, who flew in to South
Africa on Saturday to hold talks with
President Thabo Mbeki, was Kabila’s
former foreign minister. He joined
the rebels after accusing Kabila of
nepotism and corruption and failing
to chart a clear political course.
The civil war in the former Zaire,
which erupted a year after Kabila
overthrew its former dictator Mobutu
Sese Seko, has drawn in forces from
five other countries. Zimbabwe,
Namibia and Angola have been prop
ping up Kabila’s regime, while
Uganda and Rwanda have been sup
porting the rebels trying to overthrow
him.
Wamba encouraged South
Africa’s continuing involvement in
the peace process.
“The emphasis in the DRC has
shifted from fighting to negotiation,
an area in which South Africa has rich
experience,” he said.
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