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Indybay Feature

Free the MTA 9 - African Teens Wrongly Convicted in Baltimore

by UhuruNews.com
African Community of Baltimore Demands "Free the MTA 9!"; contends the conviction of five eighth-graders in Baltimore is representative of attack on democratic rights of entire African community
mta9-demo.jpg
(get update on the case this Sunday on UhuruRadio.com at 1pm U.S. ET)

Baltimore, MD – On March 18, 2008, five African eighth-graders were convicted of assaulting two white adults, 26-year-old Sarah Kreager and her boyfriend, 30-year-old Troy Ennis on a Maryland Transit Authority (MTA) bus on December 4, 2007 in a dispute over a seat.

The African students maintain that Kreager started the fight by spitting on and punching them, while Ennis made racial slurs and threatened to stab them. One student filed counter assault charges against Kreager, but prosecutors quickly dropped that case.

“No grown person should be spitting on kids,” declared Quentin Whaley Sr., 54, the father of one of the teens. “This isn’t 1857. This is 2008. We won’t be chattel property.”

The Baltimore Branch of the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) denounces the conviction of the children and calls on the judge to release them without any further detainment or probation.

The state provided no evidence that linked any of these children to the beating. What is most certain is that the children on trial were the few remaining youth who did not run and were picked by the MTA police to be the fall guys.

InPDUM believes that the children were found guilty, not because of evidence of guilt but to relieve the fears of white people to live or visit the streets of Baltimore.

Nnamdi Lumumba, President of the Baltimore Branch of the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement says, “We’re tired of the word of a white person being considered more credible than the statements of a black person."

“The children reported that Kreager walked on the bus with her eye already bruised and damaged,” Lumumba said. “Yet it is the children who get dragged through the mud as the people who caused the damage to her face.”

Court records show that Kreager accused Ennis of domestic violence in 2006. On April 7, Kreager was found guilty of attempted drug distribution and possession in Baltimore City.

Lumumba charges, "This case is an obvious example of the assumption that the word of any white person is more credible than that of a Black person. This is an offense that the African community will not tolerate any longer. We understand that the attack on these children is a veiled attack on the democratic rights of the entire African community."

The International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement (http://www.inpdum.org) is a mass organization created to defend the democratic rights of the African community. Nationwide, InPDUM has worked to protect the rights of African working class and poor families in cases of police brutality and murder.
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by .
seen it a dozen times in a fewc years, white person attacks african of any shade up to light, the police invariably arrest and sometimes threaten the person that was attacked. even when the white attacker sheds the african indian or womans blood. police never concieve that an african of any shade could possibly ever tell the truth. this is it ''america'' time to expose the nazis, nazi types do exist, right in the court of law...
by Specifically, attack queers.
Uhuru is sometimes-violently homophobic. Nor has it ever disclaimed such.

Some of us simply will ot forget, as long as the situation remains unrectified.

Homophobia is an attack on people of color as well.
by PRINCESS FOBR
If the juvenile justice system in Baltimore is so corrupt that it got this incident totally backwards you need to hire lawyers not just make outrageous accusations. You say these children were innocent as can be and the system framed them because they are black? How stupid do you think people in Baltimore and the nation are? This kind of racket will never warrant sympathy because it is false. You are promoting a lie. How does that promote equality? How does your black racism measure up to white racism? Both are bad, and obvious racism does not warrant any respect or belief. You are trying to pull a Jenna, trying to make a Nifong. Good luck. Your attempt is pathetic.
by dave
These kids about beat this woman half to death, vandalized the bus, and beat her boyfriend. After the bus stopped, she tried to get away, but they continued to kick and beat her while she was on the ground helpless. They wouldn't have stopped had it not been for the woman whose house the bus stopped at intervened.

Even if Sarah Kreager did spit, and use a racial slur, you don't get to KILL somebody, and act like a pack of wild animals!

There were several witness that cooberated Kreager's version of events, including the bus driver, who was black. So which black person is lying here? Of all the other passengers on the bus, no one backed the kid's version of events, including several of the other students that were there!

Perhaps you should actually check the facts, eh?
by anti-cult
Uhuru are just plain scumbags. Indybay shouldn't give this little authoritarian cult a platform.

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