Bakery heir’s lawyer wants informants’ names
OAKLAND — Attorneys for men with ties to Your Black Muslim Bakery who are charged with trashing two West Oakland liquor stores in 2005 asked a judge Monday to identify three confidential police informants who helped identify their clients.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Morris Beatus did not rule on the request, and will interview the informants in a closed hearing Jan. 3 to determine whether to provide defense attorneys with their identities.
The prosecutor will be present at the hearing, but defense attorneys won’t and must submit their questions in writing beforehand.
Yusuf Bey IV, a Your Black Muslim Bakery heir and alleged mastermind of the liquor store attacks, and five others are charged with felony vandalism, hate crimes and false imprisonment for allegedly vandalizing San Pablo Market and Liquor and New York Market on Nov. 23, 2005.
Bey IV is the son of bakery founder Yusuf Bey, who died in 2003 amid allegations of sexual abuse by a former bakery employee.
Confidential informants and eyewitnesses identified Bey IV and five others — Donald Cunningham, Ajuwon Muhammad, Dyamen Williams, Kahlil Raheem and Jamall Robinson — after viewing a security camera videotape that showed a group of suit-clad men smashing liquor cases and bottles of booze.
Police were told by store owners and employees that the vandals chastised them for selling alcohol, which they charged is against the tenets of their Muslim faith.
Defense attorneys also want Oakland police to turn over all records associated with a fire and an alleged kidnapping that occurred at the New York Market five days after the vandalism. The attorneys also want records from a company that investigates insurance fraud.
Bey and the others have not been linked by police to the suspected arson and kidnapping, and their attorneys want the information so they can see if one of the market’s employees deliberately set the blaze and faked the kidnapping.
Defense attorneys argue that if the fire and kidnapping were staged by someone who identified their clients as vandals, then they should be able to use the information to impeach that person’s character on the witness stand. Your Black Muslim Bakery is not affiliated with the Nation of Islam, and is a local group whose stated mission is to empower troubled people to better their lives. But the organization’s leaders have been hampered by violence and criminal charges since Bey’s death.