Remember the pair of lawyers who were caught throwing a Molotov cocktail at an unoccupied NYPD vehicle last Saturday? The woman who actually threw the homemade incendiary was Urooj Rahman. Both she and Colinford Mattis, who was driving the minivan she was riding in, have been arrested and charged with causing damage by fire to a police vehicle. This afternoon the NY Post is reporting that Rahman gave an interview on the street less than an hour before the Molotov incident. In the interview she defended the use of violence against police.
“I think this protest is a long time coming,” lawyer Urooj Rahman said near the Barclays Center in Brooklyn around 12:15 a.m. May 30.
“This s–t won’t ever stop unless we f–kin’ take it all down. And that’s why the anger is being expressed tonight in this way,” she said…
Rahman, 31, said in the video before the molotov incident that violence against cops was “understandable,” adding, “people are angry because the police are never held accountable.
“This has got to stop. And the only way they hear, the only way they hear us is through violence, through the means that they use,” she said.
“We’ve got to use the massa’s [master’s] tools, that’s what my friend always says.”
When Rahman and Mattis were arrested police found materials to make more Molotov cocktails inside the van. In fact, a witness claimed that in addition to throwing one herself, Rahman had attempted to hand them out to others so they could also throw them.
Both Mattis and Rahman were released on $250,000 bail after their arrest. A former Obama administration official came forward to put up the bail money for Rahman.
Government prosecutors argued that releasing the pair was a mistake given that tensions between protesters and the police remain high.
“We don’t believe this is the time to be releasing a bomb-thrower like the defendant into the community,” argued federal prosecutor Ian Richardson.
The judge in the case ultimately ruled, however, that the decision by Rizvi and others to guarantee the bail swayed him to grant them home detention.
However, just a short time ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed that decision and both Mattis and Rahman are now back in federal custody.
Attorneys Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman charged in Molotov cocktail attack on @NYPDnews are now back in federal custody after the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed bail decision by the District Court.
— US Attorney EDNY (@EDNYnews) June 5, 2020
The charges against the pair carry a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. Given the evidence against them, including this video of Rahman endorsing violence shortly beforehand, their attorney is probably hoping to make some kind of deal to avoid the possibility that they get even more time behind bars. The full interview is said to be 4-minutes long. Here’s about a minute of it.
