The New York Post

By Frankie Edozien

CONAKRY, Guinea.

LAURATOU Diallo held tight to her two brothers as she stood on the tarmac of Gbessia International Airport yesterday and awaited the Air France jetliner bringing home the body of Amadou Diallo.

She had arrived at the airport clad in an elegant embroidered outfit, but now, like many around her, she was wearing a simple white T-shirt emblazoned with her brother’s smiling face.

It said simply: “Amadou Diallo Memorial.”

The eldest daughter, Lauratou has been doing her duty, keeping this tight-knit family together while her parents were in New York. It is she who has been taking care of things.

Each morning, for the past few days, this 20-year-old has brought brothers Ibrahima, 16, and Abdulsallam, 15, to the Diallo compound to receive well-wishers. And they have been coming - from Gabon, from Burkina Faso, from just around the corner. They come and they cry.

Lauratou - a secretary for a local mining company - hugs them, feeds them and shows them pictures of the brother she loved so much, stoically doing the things that need to be done.

She talks about her brother, sometimes still using the present tense. After all, in her heart he is and always will be alive and well.

“Amadou always keeps your secret,” she says.

“He will never discuss things that you have said to him with someone else,” Lauratou told me as she showed me pictures of their travels in Asia.

While her brothers are quiet, even taking a break from the crowds to lie on the hammock under the baobab tree, Lauratou appears indefatigable, available to the well-wishers from dawn to way past dusk.

She has not hidden her pain, she says - she cries whenever she thinks of her slain brother. But she must have done so in private.

Lauratou, it seems, has channeled that pain into a pillar of strength while everyone around her takes turns falling apart.

Calling Lauratou a strong African queen would be an understatement.

It is crystal-clear she loved her brother so much. From what she has told me, it must have been reciprocated. When she recently got engaged, Amadou would not stop calling her, asking her if she was sure; if it was the right thing for her to do; how it would affect her career, and so forth.

“He was worried,” she says. “He just wanted me to do the right thing. He cared so much about everybody. When he came home [from Singapore] he brought gifts for everyone he knew in the family without telling anyone he had brought gifts for others.”

And then last night, the realization that Amadou would not be calling again must have hit in a new way.

The moment she set her eyes on the plain wooden coffin, she collapsed into her younger brothers’ arms.

And she wept.

Big brother Amadou would not be grilling her about her romantic choices anymore. He would no longer offer her career advice, no longer urge her and her brothers to keep praying or to help their mother, Kadiatou, as he had so often done. Whom can she confide in now?

She dissolved under a sea of tears, tears that rained down even more when she reunited with her parents minutes later. This sister’s courage and sorrow is difficult to quantify, but somehow the whole world shares her pain.

As I watched her weep, I wanted to reach out and touch her and say it was going to be all right. Then I realized, it was not.

Amadou is never coming back. The hail of police bullets in the vestibule of 1157 Wheeler Ave. on Feb. 4 ensured that.

 

The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN Post Correspondent

 

CONAKRY, Guinea - A huge crowd of mourners received the body of slain immigrant New Yorker Amadou Diallo in his native Africa yesterday with a chorus of piercing wails and grim prayers.

The litany of grief began as soon as the Air France jet from Paris touched down on the runway at Gbessia International Airport at 1:30 p.m. New York time.

A group of about 100 relatives and high government officials and their aides stood on the tarmac in the evening twilight, while thousands waited beyond a wall at the edge of the airfield.

As soon as the wheels hit the ground, women in the knot of family members began to wail in bitter anguish.

Many of the relatives wore white T-shirts bearing a picture of Diallo - the 22-year-old street peddler who died in a hail of police gunfire in the vestibule of his Bronx building on Feb. 4.

Diallo’s parents remained on the plane while the rest of the passengers deboarded and were bused to the small terminal.

Then airport workers took the plain wooden casket out of the belly of the aircraft, loaded it onto a baggage car, and drove slowly to the waiting family.

In a gripping scene, the family’s 64-year-old matriarch, Diallo’s maternal grandmother Hadja Diaray Diallo, stepped forward, dropped to her knees and placed her wrinkled hands on the coffin.

Speaking sorrowfully and soberly in the Fulah language, the old woman began to cry out a heart-wrenching recitation of praise for her dead grandson.

Behind her, Diallo’s sister, Lauratou, 20, let out a shriek of despair and, crying unremittingly, collapsed into the arms of her two brothers, Ibrahima, 16. and Abdulsallam, 15.

Cabinet ministers from the Guinean government began to intone a prayer as Diallo’s parents, Kadiadou and Saikou Diallo, emerged from the plane and walked down the stairs onto the tarmac, accompanied by the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Lauratou and her brothers dashed toward their parents and flung themselves into their arms.

After a brief reunion the family got into several cars, the casket was loaded into a minivan, and the procession made its way slowly through the huge crowd that had gathered at the airport - drawn by government-sponsored radio announcements urging Guineans to turn out en masse.

The grim convoy drove about 40 minutes across this seaside city to the Ignace Deen Hospital, which houses the morgue - and where several hundred more people had gathered.

Saikou Diallo told The Post he was deeply moved by the profound reaction to his son’s killing in New York, especially during a packed memorial service at a Manhattan mosque last week and in the 600-car motorcade that escorted them to Newark Airport Sunday.

“It was amazing. Here too there are people everywhere,” the father said.

“People have supported us our whole journey. From the moment I landed in New York until the time I got here. I’m very thankful.”

The elder Diallo reiterated his reasons for refusing to meet with Mayor Giuliani last week.

“We took a stand that until he does something about the police, we will not meet with him,” he said.

The Diallos and Sharpton have demanded the four officers who shot Diallo - who was unarmed - be suspended and that their guns be taken away.

The case will go to a Bronx grand jury as early as today. The panel will consider possible charges against the four cops - Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy and Kenneth Boss - who worked in the elite Street Crime Unit.

They have been reassigned to desk duty.

“This was an amazing response. I’ve been to Africa but … I’ve never had this feeling of having to bring home a son of Africa,” Sharpton said after meeting with government officials.

“How do you explain this to them? What do you say?

“This has raised the issue of police brutality to an international level. How can Washington ignore this whole nation’s day of mourning?” said Sharpton, who has called for a federal probe into Diallo’s killing.

Diallo’s funeral will be held today.

The family will leave Conakry at dawn tomorrow and drive several hours north to the tiny village of Hoolande Bourou, their ancestral home, where Diallo will be buried.

 

 

The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN Post Correspondent

 

CONAKRY, Guinea - A huge crowd of mourners received the body of slain immigrant New Yorker Amadou Diallo in his native Africa yesterday with a chorus of piercing wails and grim prayers.

The litany of grief began as soon as the Air France jet from Paris touched down on the runway at Gbessia International Airport at 1:30 p.m. New York time.

A group of about 100 relatives and high government officials and their aides stood on the tarmac in the evening twilight, while thousands waited beyond a wall at the edge of the airfield.

As soon as the wheels hit the ground, women in the knot of family members began to wail in bitter anguish.

Many of the relatives wore white T-shirts bearing a picture of Diallo - the 22-year-old street peddler who died in a hail of police gunfire in the vestibule of his Bronx building on Feb. 4.

Diallo’s parents remained on the plane while the rest of the passengers deboarded and were bused to the small terminal.

Then airport workers took the plain wooden casket out of the belly of the aircraft, loaded it onto a baggage car, and drove slowly to the waiting family.

In a gripping scene, the family’s 64-year-old matriarch, Diallo’s maternal grandmother Hadja Diaray Diallo, stepped forward, dropped to her knees and placed her wrinkled hands on the coffin.

Speaking sorrowfully and soberly in the Fulah language, the old woman began to cry out a heart-wrenching recitation of praise for her dead grandson.

Behind her, Diallo’s sister, Lauratou, 20, let out a shriek of despair and, crying unremittingly, collapsed into the arms of her two brothers, Ibrahima, 16. and Abdulsallam, 15.

Cabinet ministers from the Guinean government began to intone a prayer as Diallo’s parents, Kadiadou and Saikou Diallo, emerged from the plane and walked down the stairs onto the tarmac, accompanied by the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Lauratou and her brothers dashed toward their parents and flung themselves into their arms.

After a brief reunion the family got into several cars, the casket was loaded into a minivan, and the procession made its way slowly through the huge crowd that had gathered at the airport - drawn by government-sponsored radio announcements urging Guineans to turn out en masse.

The grim convoy drove about 40 minutes across this seaside city to the Ignace Deen Hospital, which houses the morgue - and where several hundred more people had gathered.

Saikou Diallo told The Post he was deeply moved by the profound reaction to his son’s killing in New York, especially during a packed memorial service at a Manhattan mosque last week and in the 600-car motorcade that escorted them to Newark Airport Sunday.

“It was amazing. Here too there are people everywhere,” the father said.

“People have supported us our whole journey. From the moment I landed in New York until the time I got here. I’m very thankful.”

The elder Diallo reiterated his reasons for refusing to meet with Mayor Giuliani last week.

“We took a stand that until he does something about the police, we will not meet with him,” he said.

The Diallos and Sharpton have demanded the four officers who shot Diallo - who was unarmed - be suspended and that their guns be taken away.

The case will go to a Bronx grand jury as early as today. The panel will consider possible charges against the four cops - Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy and Kenneth Boss - who worked in the elite Street Crime Unit.

They have been reassigned to desk duty.

“This was an amazing response. I’ve been to Africa but … I’ve never had this feeling of having to bring home a son of Africa,” Sharpton said after meeting with government officials.

“How do you explain this to them? What do you say?

“This has raised the issue of police brutality to an international level. How can Washington ignore this whole nation’s day of mourning?” said Sharpton, who has called for a federal probe into Diallo’s killing.

Diallo’s funeral will be held today.

The family will leave Conakry at dawn tomorrow and drive several hours north to the tiny village of Hoolande Bourou, their ancestral home, where Diallo will be buried.