Islamist sect blamed for editor's street execution

Monday, August 06, 2007

Islamist sect blamed for editor's street execution

Chancey Bailey's death is being linked to a militant black Muslim organisation.

For Chancey Bailey, one of the most respected black journalists in America, last Friday's trip to work should have been like any other.
The editor of the Oakland Post was strolling down the pavement in Oakland, a mostly black city next to San Francisco. Bailey, 57, lived just a few blocks away.

Suddenly, a man dressed in black and wearing a mask appeared. Shots rang out and Bailey collapsed from three bullet wounds. He was dead before an ambulance arrived; the apparent victim of an assassination ...

Bailey's murder has shocked the San Francisco Bay Area. It has also rippled out into the rest of America as the country comes to grips with the daylight murder of a senior newspaper editor ...

The reason that Bailey was killed appears to lie with the secretive and shadowy black Muslim sect in Oakland that Bailey was investigating.

A day after he died, a series of dramatic police raids unfolded across the city, aimed at a group of Islamists centred on a business called Your Black Muslim Bakery. The bakery was the centrepiece of a business empire founded by Yusef Bey, a black Muslim leader in Oakland whose followers preached a strict message of Islam and black political power. Bey's followers have long been the subject of intense police and media scrutiny for their alleged use of strong-arm tactics in promoting their business interests and also shutting down stores that sold alcohol.

Bailey had written articles about Your Muslim Black Bakery and was believed to be working on further investigations when he was killed. He had recently been making enquiries in the black business community about the bakery's finances. His colleagues also told police he had recently received death threats because of his journalistic work, but had not been specific about their source.

The raids ended with seven arrests and the discovery of a cache of weapons and ammunition. Police said initial findings had linked some of the weapons to Bailey's case.

Chancey Bailey's death is being linked to a militant black Muslim organisation.