The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN Post Correspondent

CONAKRY, Guinea.

THERE were smiles yesterday at the Ignace Deen Hospital - even from Kadiatou Diallo.

“It was only my third smile since my son died,” she said.

“The first was after we sacrificed a cow when we first got the news. The second was when I saw all the crowds at Newark Airport.

“And then today,” she added.

She was resplendent in a flowing aquamarine brocade boubou, elegantly embroidered. She sat next to Amadou’s father, Saikou, their adviser Al Sharpton and her children, all elegant in blue and brown African garb fashioned from brocade.

She must have felt good to be home, or at least comfortable finally under the sweltering African sun, because for the first time since her son was killed she looked genuinely relaxed.

And so, her hair covered in Muslim fashion with a white scarf, Diallo smiled at the well-wishers who came to the hospital, which held the body before the funeral, to pay their respects to her slain son, Amadou - the son who called her “Maaaam” because his stammer stopped him from saying “momma.”

They all use the same words to speak of her son’s death. They say they came to pay their respects to the parents of the man who “was slaughtered by the police in New York.”

Not just killed, or slain, or even murdered. Slaughtered.

All around this coastal city people cannot help talking about the man who left here 2 years ago with a thousand dollars in his pocket for an education in New York but returned two days ago in a wooden casket, his body riddled with 19 bullet holes.

At the port, the workers talk of the “slaughter” of Amadou Diallo; at the “Marche Niger,” the local market, the “slaughter” crops up in conversation.

In the local mosque, imams are praying that no Guinean is ever again slaughtered in the same fashion. Even at the abattoir, the local slaughterhouse, the slaughter most often referred to now is that of Amadou Diallo.

But when senior government officials, including the foreign affairs minister, Lamine Kamara, a man who is so careful with words, used the phrase repeatedly, I began to get a clearer picture of how these gentle people view this whole affair.

Most Guineans do not buy nicely packaged meat in supermarkets. They do not buy a lot of frozen fish either. They cultivate the land and cast wide fishing nets. They slaughter cows and goats - but not people. People do not get slaughtered.

While everyone agrees that what happened in the vestibule of Diallo’s Bronx apartment building on Feb. 4 should not have happened, I can understand the family’s continued disappointment with the way the system in New York has failed them up to this point.

If they view what happened to their Amadou as a death worthy only of an animal, then one can understand why 12 days later they are not satisfied with the seemingly slow pace of justice.

While they were in New York, the Diallos demanded that the four officers who fired 41 shots at their son be suspended and their guns taken away; they repeated that call yesterday.

The wheels of justice may grind slowly but, as the saying goes, justice delayed is justice denied. Even if these four officers are eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, what harm is there in taking away their guns until the investigation is completed?

A suspension would have gone a long way in helping this family - and this nation - cope.

“Yes!” Kadiatou said emphatically. “It would be a beginning.”

The grieving mother added: “But it’s going to be hard living without him and I don’t know how I’m going to cope after everyone’s gone … I don’t know what my reaction will be

The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN Post Correspondent

 

CONAKRY, Guinea - Mourners intoned Muslim funeral prayers over the plain wooden casket of Amadou Diallo yesterday - as his mother vowed he would become a “symbol” in the fight against police brutality.

“I accept that my son is dead, but I don’t want him todisappear,” said Kadiatou Diallo, dressed for the funeral in a traditional blue brocade gown.

“I want him to be a symbol for innocent victims of police brutality.”

The family of the 22-year-old immigrant who was killed by police gunfire in New York Feb. 4 congregated at the morgue at the Ignace Deen Hospital yesterday morning, where hundreds of people showed up in the intense heat to offer condolences and file past the casket.

For one of the first times in the long ordeal since her son died, Kadiatou Diallo was seen to crack a smile as relatives and old friends embraced her.

The visitors recalled the young man who was known for his religious devotion even as he relished the independence and seemingly unlimited potential of life in New York.

The day’s events were marked by a mixture of sorrow and stoicism - as the family reached a kind of emotional equilibrium following the raw anguish that greeted the parents on Monday when they brought their son’s body home from New York.

Shortly before noon the coffin was taken across town to the elaborate Faycal mosque, where the men and women separated, according to Muslim custom.

About 60 men, including Amadou’s father, brothers, uncles and cousins, close family friends, government officials and the Rev. Al Sharpton, the family’s adviser, formed a semicircle around the coffin in a small room off the mosque’s main prayer hall.

Two incense sticks were placed on the coffin - on which Diallo’s name was written in English and Arabic - and the men sat on the floor with their backs to the casket.

Under the guidance of the head imam, El-Hadj Ibrahim Bah, pages of the Koran were handed out to numerous men.

They all began reading from the holy book at once in Arabic, creating a mesmerizing, crisscrossing sing-song of scripture that rose and fell in the small space.

After nearly two hours the men had passed through an entire reading of the Koran and the prayers abruptly stopped - while others tossed Guinean francs onto the floor in a traditional gesture of thanks for the readers.

The imam then said a benediction in French for Diallo and a special prayer for Guineans who have gone abroad in search of an education, asking that they find success and return home in peace.

Afterward the mourners moved into the main prayer hall of the huge mosque - with its three elaborate domes and four minarets.

Nearly 1,000 worshipers poured in to join the family.

At this point the women were allowed in - but kept at a distance from the men in the back of the mosque - and the imam led the mourners in 45 minutes of prayer to complete the funeral service.

Before the service, as mourners paid their respects at the hospital, Kadiatou sent a somber message to Mayor Giuliani.

“The people here have seen the injustice that the mayor has done. He needs to do something about those four police officers, not come and see me,” she said.

Kadiatou and her ex-husband, Saikou Diallo, rebuffed Giuliani’s attempts to meet with them when they were in New York last week, demanding instead that he immediately suspend the cops who shot their unarmed son and take away their guns.

The policemen - who said they thought Diallo had a gun - have been put on desk duty.

Their actions are the focus of a Bronx grand jury that began hearing evidence yesterday.

Diallo’s family will leave Conakry before dawn this morning for the six-hour drive north to Hoolande Bourou, their ancestral village.

There another prayer service will be held and Diallo will be buried beside his paternal grandfather, Ibrahima Diallo.

The grandfather, a respected Guinean spiritual leader, once predicted that Diallo’s mother would bear a child “which the whole world will talk about.”

The family believes Amadou fulfilled that prophecy.

The Guinean government proposed burying Diallo in the national cemetery in the capital, but his father refused.

“We will bury him in the village,” Saikou Diallo said.

“No one will ever forget him. We will keep his memory alive.”