Almost a year to the day of Ali Mohammed's death outside DC9 on 9th Street NW, his family will mark the anniversary of his passing with a multi-million dollar lawsuit, says a press release issued by the family's spokesperson. Tomorrow at 10:30 a.m., it promises, Mohammed's family and supporters will gather outside DC9 to annouce filing "multiple claims" against the venue. Representatives of DC9 couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Full press release below:

FAMILY OF ALI MOHAMMED FILES WRONGFUL DEATH LAWSUIT AGAINST DC 9 NIGHTCLUB

Washington, DC — October 13, 2011 – On Friday, October 14, 2011, the family of the late Ali Mohammed and their lawyer Donald Temple will file a multimillion dollar lawsuit against DC 9 Nightclub in the District of Columbia Superior Court. Mr. Ali’s family and community supporters will hold a press conference on Friday, October 14, 2011 at DC 9 Nightclub on U Street at 10:30 am to announce the filing of the civil lawsuit.

October 15, 2011 will mark the one year anniversary of Ali Mohammed’s tragic vigilante style death after an alleged altercation with DC 9’s owners and employees. The case also follows the DC Medical Examiner’s ruling that the death was indeed a “homicide.” Although the United States Attorney has declined to prosecute the criminal case, the family now seeks justice in civil court.

Ali Mohammed’s family requests friends, acquaintances and those concerned about justice in this case to attend the press conference. The civil legal action’s multiple claims will be presented to the media and attendees at the time. Several community members will also address the issue.

Muller is accused of trying to send a pound of pot to another veteran through the mail, according to charging documents. Police say they intercepted the parcel. A manager of the FedEx store Muller allegedly used to commit the crime told police Muller had come around to dispatch packages before, and that he was memorable on account of his wheelchair and his unique sounding laugh, which was similar to the laugh of "one of the characters from the film Revenge of the Nerds," say filings.

Documents are posted after the jump.

The founder of Vietnam Veterans of America has had his Ritz-Carlton dwelling tossed by cops looking for evidence of pot distribution after he allegedly sought to mail a package of marijuana at FedEx, according to recently filed police documents.

In papers filed this month in D.C. Superior Court, police say their search of the 23rd Street NW penthouse of wheelchair-bound anti-war activist Bobby Muller turned up plastic bags and a mason jar filled with "green weed," scales, packaging material and "bank documents."

Muller, whose veterans group went on to co-found the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines, has apparently not been arrested.  He did not respond to phone calls or email messages requesting comment. Metropolitan Police Department officials also did not return calls.

The warrant's description of how cops came to focus on an activist who has shared a stage with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and blogged for the Huffington Post would seem a lesson in drug handling 101. First pointer? If you're going to ship 1.03 pounds of cheeba through the mail, don't use your real name and address.

According to the warrant, which was obtained by a member of the Metropolitan Police Department's Intelligence Branch, that's exactly what Muller did, though the officer wrote that he scrawled "R. Muller," rather then his full name, on the alleged contraband.

On September 2, workers at the FedEx store located at 2020 K Street smelled what "they believed to be the odor of marijuana" coming from the package, which was headed to an address in Brattleboro, Vermont, says the document. The warrant says that the sniffing workers turned it over to police, who seized the mail and found the smoke.

Someone could theoretically have stolen the vet's info, of course. But the warrant says there's evidence the package was his: Muller allegedly used a credit card to pay for shipping. "Mr. Muller also returned to the Fed Ex location on Tuesday Sept. 6, 2011, to find out why his package wasn't delivered on Saturday, and to file a claim with Fed Ex," say the papers. "Both this incident and the delivery of the package were documented on the Fed Ex surveillance cameras."

Interestingly, Muller hasn't shown up in court records yet, indicating he hasn't been arrested. MPD didn't respond to inquiries about the case this morning.

Around the web, and even in a book, Muller is referred to as a Nobel Peace Prize winner—a distinction that might make him the only Nobel laureate to have his home searched for refer. As it happens, the description isn't quite accurate. "Bobby Muller was the co-founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, which in turn was one of six organizations that founded the International Campaign to Ban Landmines in 1992," says Kate Wiggans of ICBL. But according to Allegra Grevelius of the Nobel Foundation, the ICBL's 1997 Nobel was awarded only to the organization and its leader at the time, Jody Williams. Muller is "not a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate," says Grevelius.

Photo by Eric Caballero via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

To wit: Last week marked the first anniversary of the meanest, most polarizing, and most irresistible political label in recent D.C. history: "Myopic little twits," Milloy's term for the young, white gentrifiers he identified with recently defeated mayor Adrian Fenty. A year later, with a new mayor in City Hall—and a coterie of senior officials with far fewer myopic little twits among them—I asked chocolate city's ace metro columnist to reflect on his contribution to the District political dictionary. No, he doesn't have any regrets:

Yeah, another year and the Myoptic Twits are older, blinder and wise-asser. I did notice that a few volunteered to help spruce up some DCPS buildings before classes began. So miracles do happen. The rest of them seem more interested in bringing a 19th century flava to the city, with their gas lamps and trolley cars. Then again, when you're on their side of the wealth gap, inheritance gap, employment gap, education gap, you can act like landed gentry. But Im not hatin'. In fact, what I'd like to do in this next year is team up with DCist for a Myo-Twit public safety campaign. Tell these folks that if they want more Bike Share they could at least learn how to ride the damn bike, stop weaving in and out of traffic. Car bumpers are harder than their butts if not their helmetless heads. Hey, I just want them to live to see another birthday.

And that, my friends, is why Milloy is so freaking great.

Meanwhile, Milloy's column this morning goes after President Barack Obama: "Now that the presidential campaign season has begun, it’s okay for President Obama to openly court black people again," he scoffs. Obama, of course, is known for having a dog, liking nice restaurants, being a prolific social media presence, and even, on occasion, riding a bike. Could it be that Milloy's latest target is America's first Myopic Little Twit President?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

But not all of the bike brawling has been of the electoral variety: In May, after a Camaro accidentally rammed a bike in the 1800 block of Adams Mill Road NW, an actual brawl broke out. Cyclists Ian Barry and Saul Leiken told City Desk that after the vehicle skidded into a bike lane and threw Barry onto its windshield, the driver of the Camaro and several of its passengers got out and attacked the duo.

On Wednesday, the bikers had their day in court. Driver Demarcus Boulware, after having pleaded guilty to one count of simple assault, was sentenced.

So will Boulware do hard time, warning all frustrated sports car owners drivers off punching it out with cyclist they've just potentially mangled? Not likely. Boulware was given a suspended jail sentence of 50 days and a year's worth of probation. Though that's fitting since it was his first offense, it's unlikely to scare any bullying drivers straight.

Leiken, who was at the Superior Court sentencing and watched Boulware make nice in front of the judge, wasn't exactly impressed. "I'm conflicted. No priors, but at the same time he showed little remorse in his apology to me (didn't look me in the face)," he tells City Desk via tweet. Leiken, who managed to photograph the cars license plate as he was being punched and kicked—he turned the pic over to police who used it as evidence— suspects it could all happen again. "I'm also not confident that he'll take responsibility for his actions BEFORE an arrest warrant is issued next time." Boulware's lawyer couldn't immediately be reached.

In any event, you can bet that bike versus driver disputes will continue in a city where the bike has come to symbolize various divides.

Meanwhile, happy Car-Free-Day, Washington!

Almost a year later, there are still lingering questions about the death of Ali Ahmed Mohammed outside the DC9 nightclub.

One of the most prominent among them: That the young Ethiopian was in a drug-fueled rage on the October night when he allegedly chucked a brick at the club's window and subsequently ended up dead.

Writing the story of Mohammed's death, I was told privately by some of the club's supporters that Mohammed had died of personal recklessness. He was a known addict, they said. He'd gotten high and flown off the handle before, folks claimed, once wrecking a perfectly good Adams Morgan diner. "Find that diner," I was advised. But the diner never materialized. And now, according to autopsy documents recently obtained by City Desk, the 27-year-old had no illicit chemicals kicking around his system at the time of his death.

After the explosion of glass, Mohammed was allegedly chased down by five DC9 employees. Moments later, he was dead. Cops immediately accused the group of kicking Mohammed to death, touching off a firestorm of protest in D.C.'s Ethiopian communities. "We want justice," was the most common chant.

But later, the five men were cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. Authorities now believe that upon catching up with Mohammed, the men merely restrained him. In an announcement, the D.C. medical examiner explained that Mohammed's death was caused by “excited delirium associated with arrhythmogenic cardiac anomalies, alcohol intoxication and physical exertion with restraint." In other words, while he was being held onto, his heart gave out. Though drugs weren't mentioned as a cause, "excited delirium" is often associated with drug use. Unlike some other jurisdictions, D.C. doesn't make its autopsy documents public, so it was impossible to peruse Mohammed's toxicology report up until now.

At the time of his death, Mohammed tested negative for amphetamines and barbiturates and cannibinoids and cocaine metabolites and metahadone and most others drugs you could name. Dr. Moses Schanfield, a professor of Forensic Science and Anthropology at George Washington University, emails that "different drugs have different metabolic life times" but that for the most part the negative results mean Mohammed hadn't consumed any drugs in 24-48 hours.

Still, that's not to say he was completely in control. The "intoxication" the medical examiner mentioned might have been intense. Mohammed's blood alcohol content was 0.22, that's significantly over the 0.08 alcohol level D.C. law says impairs drivers. But Schanfield contends it's difficult to say just how drunk Mohammed was: "How impaired was he? Though there is a good correlation between BAC and impairment, it is modulated by how habituated to alcohol the victim was. If he was an alcoholic he might of been only mildly impaired, if a light drinker he would have been impaired significantly more."

As someone who reports on crime, I've learned a great deal about racial and cultural rifts from Mohammed's case. And I've also learned a thing or two about how we deal with tragedy. Pretty much everyone involved in the case —cops, prosecutors, community advocates, defense attorneys, rockers, reporters—have all, at some point, been dead wrong. And so have the rumor-mongers talking about Mohammed's drug use.

Report below.

Photo courtesy of Ali Ahmed Mohammed's family

Tareq Salahi  was earlier spreading the word that his wife might have been kidnapped, despite the fact that she's called him to say she's fine. Gossip site TMZ reports:

Tareq claims he got a phone call from Michaele late last night ... from an unfamiliar Oregon cell phone number ... and she told him she was going to her mother's house, located minutes away from the Salahi home.

Tareq says he was suspicious — so he called Michaele's mother ... who told him she hadn't spoken with Michaele and was unaware of her plans.  That's when Tareq — fearing Michaele had been abducted — called the Warren County Sheriff's Dept. for help. But Tareq claims deputies told him she had already called them — informing them she was OK and just dealing with some "family issues."

The sherrif's office has clarified that it did indeed receive the phone call, and that Michaele Salahi may just need some time away from hubby:

The Warren County Sheriff’s Office received a call from Mr. Tareq Salahi on Tuesday evening September 13, 2011 at 11:55 p.m. Mr. Salahi advised us that he last heard from his wife about 6 hours ago. He was concerned because she had contacted him from an Oregon area code and she was supposed to be back in Northern Virginia today.

Deputy Mike Glavis subsequently spoke with Mrs. Salahi by telephone a few moments later. Deputy Glavis was able to identify Mrs. Salahi by having previous conversations with her in the past. She seemed calm, was engaged in conversation, and assured the deputy that she had left the residence with a good friend and was where she wanted to be. Mrs. Salahi advised that she did not want Mr. Salahi to know where she was.

Mrs. Salahi advised Deputy Glavis that she was very sorry that the Sheriff’s Office had to be involved, but she did not want to be home right now.

The cops also add, though, that they and the FBI will try to "make additional contact with Mrs. Salahi to assure her well being."

UPDATE: Rumor is that Michaele Salahi is safe and sound, that she's merely run off with a dude in a band. TMZ says she's in Memphis, Tenn., with Journey guitarist Neal Schon. The couple has seen financial troubles of late, so maybe she's decided she wants better. For Tareq Salahi, who might've hoped to see his wife sometime soon, here's one piece of optimistic advice: Don't. Stop. Believin'.

Illustration by Brooke Hatfield

The pop and crackle and confusion of D.C. police radio chatter this weekend made it apparent that local badges, like most other law enforcement, were doggedly chasing the terrible specter of terrorism because of the tenth anniversary of 9/11. In the wake of a "credible but unconfirmed" warning about al Qaeda detonating car bombs in D.C. and New York, patrols careened toward suspicious vans, loomed at bridges, and stalked two U-Haul trucks reported stolen from a lot in Prince George's County. All weekend, cops toiled in grueling twelve-hour "crime emergency" shifts—perhaps sensibly opposed by the Fraternal Order of Police because of the long hours and lack of overtime pay.

According to a tally of police arrest records, as a result of the stepped up enforcement, the authorities carted away 522 people. Those weren't 522 terrorists, however. Court records show there were crimes of poverty (a man allegedly shoplifted lotion, body wash, skin cleanser, razors, deodorant and bread from the Safeway on Piney Branch Road NW) and perversion (another man allegedly put his hand up the skirt of a woman on U Street). But though there was one man with the cagey last name of "Jihad" arrested for failing to appear at a court hearing, Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson Officer Araz Ali says MPD knew of no terror-related arrests made by District cops during the tense weekend.

That probably doesn't matter. In a statement, Police Chief Cathy Lanier suggests the crime emergency is really a Ray Kelly-style bid to intimidate terrorists rather than catch up with them: "Rest assured that we are paying very close attention to this threat and that we are doing everything in our power to ensure that Washington is not an attractive target to someone trying to do harm to our residents and visitors," she says. Lanier plans on continuing the emergency measures until "I am comfortable that the threat has decreased," so shoplifters and creeps—beware.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Metro officials say they've found the Metrobus driver filmed unceremoniously heaving a passenger from his ride. Metro spokesperson Dan Stessel says Metro isn't releasing the allegedly grumpy driver's name, and that there's no word on criminal charges against him. "At this point, this is an administrative process," he says.

Video of the incident surfaced Tuesday and made the rounds on news sites, with no one having a clue as to how such an ugly incident could have happened. But now we may know: If you stumble onto a bus, crush a toddler, get mouthy with other passengers, then threaten the driver, you might just get catapulted.

According to an account given to transit cops by the witness who filmed the shoving, it all happened on the U-5 to Lincoln Heights.

On August 31, 2011 at approximately 2031 hours while riding the U-5 bus en route to Lincoln Heights, a male patron boarded in the area of Minnesota Avenue, N.E. being loud and boisterous.  C1 stated that the patron appeared to be under the influence of an unknown substance (either narcotics or alcohol) and unsteady on his feet.  While boarding the bus, the patron stumbled and fell onto a female patron that was seated and also fell on top of that patrons 2 year old child.  The female patron became angry and pushed him off of the child at which point he fell to the floor of the bus.  He was then assisted to a seat by a patron exiting the bus.  While seated, he became involved in a verbal altercation with several other patrons.  The patron stood up next to the bus operator and began to threaten him unprovoked.  C1 stated that the bus operator ignored the patron initially however the threats continued.  She stated that the bus operator became frustrated and pulled the bus over to confront the patron and demanded that he exit the bus.  This is the point in which she began to film the incident with her cell phone.

To see what happened from there, just play the vid.

City Desk has asked for updates on whether the driver will be reprimanded in some way, since Stessel earlier said that the driver did the wrong thing, and should have called transit police. We'll add more if we hear back.

Last week, the District filed a civil suit accusing Jones, a legendary D.C. gangster who "went straight" and now runs Miracle Hands Inc.—a nonprofit that purports to serve the "city's most underprivileged and neglected communities," according to its website—of renovating a strip club with $300,000 in District HIV/AIDS funds.

Jones, in turn, filed his own lawsuit in federal court yesterday, accusing the city of discriminating against him and his organization for being black—and also of defamation.

The defamation part of the suit takes issue with a press release sent out on Aug. 30 announcing that the city was taking Jones and his non-profit to court. "Miracle Hands, Inc., and its executive director, Cornell Jones, improperly diverted from the District’s HIV/AIDS program," it said.

In the $1 million suit against Jones and Miracle Hands, D.C. Attorney General Irv Nathan says that starting in 2006, Miracle Hands received city money to open a job training center for residents with HIV/AIDS in a warehouse at 2127 Queens Chapel Road NE. Instead, in 2010, the warehouse became a place for guys to stare at boobs, when glitzy strip joint Stadium Club opened there.

But Jones' lawsuit, filed by Maryland-based lawyer Jimmy Bell, claims there's no there there. His name has been dragged through the dirt by bigots.

According to court papers, though Miracle Hands used HIV/AIDS funds to retain an architect who drew up plans for renovating the warehouse Jones eventually sold to the owners of Stadium Club, there wasn't any actual construction, since plans for the project moved to another warehouse before that could happen. The suit says all renovations were done at 2145 Queens Chapel Road NE, a spot that was selected after Miracle Hands realized rehabbing 2127 would be too expensive. It also says that the city got its classes: Miracle Hands hired teachers to run job training courses at 2127 while 2145 was being fixed up.

By 2008, the suit implies, those classes were derailed by racism. Miracle Hands was promised some $500,000 in funding to get their center up and running, but the organization was stiffed when the city rerouted the money to non-blacks.

"From March 2007 – March 2008 the Defendant refused to provide the Plaintiff Miracle Hands the agreed upon funds to finish the rehabilitation at 2145," says the suit. "The Plaintiff’s representatives met with representatives of the Defendant to no avail. The Plaintiff’s representatives were informed that the money was now going to another organization whose founders and people ran the organization was outside of the Plaintiff’s protected class. They were not African American."

Nathan's office didn't respond to a request for comment

If Miracle Hands provided the services it was supposed to, that should be easy enough to prove. The claim that they've been victims of discrimination, though, would seem thin, since the Miracle Hands saga played out under two black mayors. That said, a National Institutes of Health study released in August revealed that black scientists weren't getting their due despite the organization taking pains to avoid discrimination, meaning race bias can be a fickle and complex force.

In any event, if Jones hopes to gain support for his side of the story, he'll want to keep his own offensive biases in check. As The Washington Times reported, angry about the city's allegations, during a radio program, Jones referred to two openly gay District politicians as “a couple of gay guys who sometimes get to acting like little faggots.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

A Metrobus driver is in trouble for getting pushy—literally.

Video of a hulky driver shoving a not-so-hulky, maybe even scrawny, rider off a bus surfaced over the holiday weekend, and has WMATA hunting the offending employee. They weren't able to immediately identify the driver from the video, but Metro spokesperson Dan Stessel told NBC Washington that ramming a customer off a bus "is completely inappropriate."

Though there's no indication of how the conflict got started, the video captures the driver opening the doors of the bus and the passenger proclaiming, "I ain't done nothing to nobody, man." The driver thinks different: "Go ahead and get off the bus, now," he orders.

They argue for a few moments before the driver decides to go all linebacker. The rider resists being pushed off by grabbing onto a pole, but that only inspires the driver to bulldoze harder, eventually flinging the rider from the vehicle and into the street in an awkward and painful-looking flop.

Stessel told NBC4 the driver should have called transit police instead of acting like a club bouncer, but in my experience, there's also another option. As a daily Metrobus rider, I've seen passengers who've earned the ire of a driver and a command to "get off" refuse to go. But that's when the driver has defused the situation by pulling over and saying something like, "I can't move this bus until you get off." At that point, everyone stares daggers at the problematic rider, who eventually succumbs to social pressure. Deescalating conflicts would seem to be an important skill for a D.C. bus operator to have handy, since Metrobus drivers were assaulted 90 times last year.

Multiple calls to Metro for an update on their manhunt went unanswered.

But a statement released on Wednesday by Ed Jackson, the memorial's executive architect, insists there won't be any do-overs: "The inscription on the Stone of Hope comes directly from Dr. King’s words. Our goal is to help visitors learn about Dr. King’s central beliefs and commitments. We have no plans to alter the Memorial."

The quote in question appears on the north side of the sculpture and reads “I was a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness,” instead of Kings more humbly wrought “Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness.”

Jackson may seem confident at this point, but while people are unlikely to get behind major changes to the memorial, pressure for an inscription-do-over could easily mount. Angelou and Norton certainly have pull within a black community enormously invested in King's legacy—and a generation familiar with how to fight for change.

Photo by Lydia DePillis

You might have noticed the bit of discord regarding Martin Luther King's memorial. Renowned author Maya Angelou has pointed out that an inscription on the memorial makes King seem arrogant. Others have said the crossed arms and glower of the enormous likeness makes him seem the same. "He had no arrogance at all," Angelou complained to the Washington Post. "He had a humility that comes from deep inside."

The fact that this has emerged as an issue is good. Considering memorials are the way we solidify our collective memories, it's important to get things straight: King was arrogant. As a leader whose goals ran counter to the status quo, he had to be.

A 1965 Playboy Magazine interview betrays the kind of arrogance King had to keep close at hand in order to do his job. When the interviewer, Roots author Alex Haley, said King's critics accused him of being ungrateful about the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which King knew wasn't enough to secure equality, the leader didn't talk bashfully about his misguided white brethren, and then sermonize about hope. He launched into an angry and eloquent takedown and asserted that his movement was guaranteed victory:

I never cease to wonder about the amazing presumption of much of white society, assuming that they have the right to bargain with the Negro for his freedom. This continued arrogant ladling out of pieces of the rights to citizenship has begun to generate a fury in the Negro. Even though, he is not pressing for revenge or for conquest, or to gain spoils, or to enslave, or even to marry the sisters of those who have injured him. What the Negro wants—and will not stop until he gets—is absolute and unqualified freedom and equality in this land of his birth, and not in Africa or in some imaginary state. The Negro no longer will be tolerant of anything less than his due right and heritage. He is pursuing only that which he knows is honorably his. He knows that he is right.

The interview showcased the valuable part of King that was cocky. Maybe the memorial does, too.

Photo by Lydia DePillis

A District nonprofit that provides various social services took HIV/AIDS money to fix up a warehouse that's now a strip club. That's according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by D.C. Attorney General Irv Nathan. Nathan is suing reformed city gangster Cornell Jones and his nonprofit—Miracle Hands—for $1 million because of the alleged shenanigans involved.

In court documents filed at D.C. Superior Court Tuesday, Nathan contends Jones and his operation received $329,653 in city funding to renovate a warehouse at 2127 Queens Chapel Road NE as a job training center for residents with HIV/AIDS. A press release from Nathan's office explains that what the city got instead was writhing bodies and body glitter.

The Complaint charges that although Miracle Hands had decided by early 2007 to change the location of its planned job-training facility from 2127 Queens Chapel Road to 2145 Queens Chapel Road, it continued to submit invoices to the District for renovation work performed at the 2127 Queens Chapel Road location. A nightclub liquor license was secured in August 2006 for the 2127 Queens Chapel Road location, which, following its renovation, was opened in 2010 as the Stadium Club.

Stadium is a sprawling high-end nudie joint where you can also order a good steak. According to the Washington Times, Jones sold the city-spiffed warehouse to Stadium Club owner Keith Forney for $2.7 million in March; the business had leased the property from Jones prior to that. Miracle Hands never opened the training center.

Councilmember David Catania, who chairs the committee on health and has been sounding the alarm about Miracle Hands, calls the situation "egregious impropriety." Messages left for Jones weren't answered, and court records don't show he's acquired a lawyer yet, but it'll be interesting to hear his side of the story, which if he's creative, might start something like, "Well, we meant for it to be a job training center but then someone donated this pole and..."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

By April, they'd intercepted 104 kilograms of khat supposedly headed to Shuremu from the U.K. in the mail. Cops got a search warrant and raided Shuremu's business, where they say they found 36 more kilograms of khat. Shuremu was arrested without incident. MPD referred to him as a "a major drug traffic dealer." They said his arrest had taken $95,000 worth of khat off the streets. But on July 19, after prosecutors requested the action, Shuremu's case was dismissed without prejudice. Prosecutors can refile, but a month later, there's no sign they will.
A bitter tasting leaf popular among East Africans, fresh khat delivers a buzz that makes people euphoric and talkative after chewing it. Though no one is quite sure if khat does anything more dangerous than stain teeth, it was outlawed in the United States in the 1990s. Reportedly, that hasn't stopped it from being popular among D.C. cab drivers.

So why, after all the hubbub MPD made, is Shuremu walking free? Shuremu's lawyer and the U.S. Attorney's Office declined comment on the matter, and an official inquiry to MPD has so far gone unanswered. But a police source close to the case, speaking on condition of anonymity because he didn't have permission to discuss the investigation, says it's simple: No one knows crap about khat.

"They couldn't find an expert to testify at the trial," he says. In drug trafficking cases, a law enforcement expert  usually testifies about the drug in question and how criminals distribute it. According to the source, MPD doesn't have a local khat expert. In such a situation, the Drug Enforcement Agency's Washington Field Office is sometimes tapped, but DEA spokesperson Melissa Bell says khat use isn't a "broad-based" problem ("It's more a cultural thing," she says) so the DEA doesn't have an expert on hand either.

That would seem to be good news for any burgeoning khat cartels. Quick, start selling—before the authorities figure out what's up.

Photo by cliff1066™ via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0 Generic