A political activist serving the longest federal prison sentence of any 2020 Black Lives Matter protester was transferred without warning to a detention facility thousands of miles away from their supporters and attorney.
Malik Muhammad’s transfer from the custody of the Oregon Department of Corrections came almost immediately on the heels of a misconduct report about organizing protest activity about their conditions from prison.
The report — which was obtained by The Intercept and flags conversations that are critical of Israel, the U.S., and the Oregon prison system — and subsequent transfer raise serious concerns about the state of censorship and free speech within the state’s carceral system.
In March, Muhammad vanished from every inmate tracking system without a trace, after missing a scheduled call with their lawyer. Days went by with no word. Inquiries from their attorney were met with vague runarounds from officials.
Muhammad, a veteran diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, spent much of their time in Oregon in and out of solitary confinement. As a result, trouble communicating with Muhammad was not altogether unusual. As the days of silence became weeks, however, fear set in among Muhammad’s loved ones.
In April, Muhammad’s partner received a letter saying that Muhammad was alive — but thousands of miles away at Kirkland Correctional Institution in South Carolina.
The Oregon Department of Corrections, in response to questions from The Intercept in May, denied that Muhammad, an avowed anarchist and father of one, had been transferred as retaliation for their activism inside the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution. Prison system officials said instead that there were “extensive background reasons” for Muhammad’s transfer.
A misconduct report issued in March suggests that Muhammad’s public-facing and internal activism — particularly on their blog, “Malik Speaks!” — was a major thorn in the side of the Oregon prison system. Other prison write-ups of Muhammad’s activities behind bars described to The Intercept by their attorney took a similar line, focusing on Muhammad’s organizing on their blog and communications with other incarcerated people.
The misconduct report from March details posts from Muhammad’s blog urging their supporters to undertake a coordinated phone and messaging campaign; Muhammad wanted them to write to the prison and to public officials to call for better conditions inside and an end to Muhammad’s solitary confinement.
Oregon corrections officials are “punishing Malik for their political beliefs, for things that would normally be First Amendment protected and not within the normal scope of exceptions,” said Lauren Regan, director of litigation and advocacy at the Civil Liberties Defense Center and Muhammad’s attorney. Prison systems, she said, “hate anarchism and anti-fascism.”
The March misconduct report, which accuses Muhammad of “formulating an impact on the safety and security while promotion of security threat activity,” came only six days before the transfer to South Carolina. (The Oregon Department of Corrections declined to comment on “disciplinary matters,” citing department policy.)
To Christopher Kuttruff, a friend of Muhammad’s, it all seems like Oregon’s transfer was a ploy to make the publicity around Muhammad’s case into someone else’s issue.
“They want it to be another state’s problem,” Kuttruff said, “so they don’t face the same scrutiny.”
In the Hole
As they clutched the wrinkled pages of the misconduct report, Muhammad knew something big was about to happen.
In early March, officials flagged messages where the activist said they “have always been anti-Israel my whole life.” In another message, Muhammad says, “I’m begging for them to do it” — allegedly in reference to someone bombing the U.S. The messages prompted a further review, according to the misconduct report obtained by The Intercept.
The review turned up a message in which Muhammad called a guard a pig and said they wanted to “breakkk” their face. Muhammad maintains that the messages were spliced out of context and that the face comment was not a threat, but an insult tossed out in frustration.
Muhammad was thrown back into a disciplinary housing unit.
Weeks after their time in the “hole,” Muhammad received another misconduct report. This one, however, felt different.
“I knew that was what they were constructing to get me sent out,” they said. “I sent like a hundred letters as soon as I got the DR” — referring to the disciplinary report.
The three-page report accused Muhammad of engaging in “racketeering,” “unauthorized transfer” of digital currency, “unauthorized organization,” and “unauthorized use of info systems.” All the allegations were related to Muhammad’s blog, which they maintain with the help of their supporters and use to organize advocacy around their case and raise funds for their commissary account.
“Evidence supports that AIC Muhammad utilizes his visitor [redacted] to actively maintain a blog on his behalf while he is incarcerated,” a prison official wrote, referring to Muhammad, who uses they/them pronouns, as an “Adult in Custody.”
“His blog website,” the misconduct report says, “focuses on an organized grouping of individuals that support AIC Muhammad in his beliefs, using visual, written, and recorded readings from AIC Muhammad. These items contain his propaganda messages and are dispersed in a social seeding manner through his visitor(s) through his blog.”
The report says Muhammad had broken Oregon administrative rules on “unauthorized use of info systems” by allowing a recording from a prison call system to be transcribed and uploaded to their blog.
Another conclusion was more consequential: Citing writings on Muhammad’s blog, officials claimed that the protest organizing and political activity was having “an impact on the safety and security” of the facility. The report cited Muhammad’s encouragement of the phone campaigns and other activities related to the blog, such as purchasing left-leaning reading materials for other incarcerated people.
Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney who has litigated prison free-speech cases and is today with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said that speaking out on conditions inside of prison is generally First Amendment-protected speech. Officials can’t curtail speech to the outside by exempting complaints from inside about prisoners’ incarceration.
“If an inmate,” said Fitzpatrick, “is sending a letter or posting online peacefully making their views known about, ‘Hey, here’s what’s going on inside the facility. If you think this is wrong, I suggest writing your congressman or writing the facility, and asking that something be done to fix this’ — to me, that strikes me as something that ought to be protected by the First Amendment.”
Behind bars, though, it’s not always that simple. A chasm lies between what should fall under First Amendment protections in prison and what does in practice.
The Supreme Court has ruled that constitutional rights apply in prison, but courts have upheld all types of restrictions on free speech, from bans on fantasy games like “Dungeons & Dragons” to medical texts like the “Physicians’ Desk Reference.” The barriers to even getting before a court to vindicate your rights are steep.
“The on-the-ground regime of what censorship looks like [inside prisons] is pretty ridiculous, and basically stands the First Amendment on its head,” said David Shapiro, the executive director of the MacArthur Justice Center, a nonprofit focused on the criminal legal system. “It is close to an anything goes censorship regime.”
Muhammad’s Blog
Few people understand this better than Muhammad, who in March was racing against the clock to get help before officials could act. After receiving the report, they began furiously sending letters.
Days after receiving the misconduct report, guards ferried Muhammad, chains hanging around their belly under their jacket, o