Charges are a conspiracy - Zulu Nation

HIP-HOP HORROR

THE GOVERNMENT, police and the Daily News are part of a coordinated effort to discredit hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation.

That was the bizarre explanation offered last week by Bambaataa’s group in response to allegations that he sexually abused boys in his Bronx apartment. The group says the claims are false and that they were generated by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the NYPD and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association — the city’s largest police union.

The statement also claims Troi (Star) Torain, a radio veteran who has posted interviews with several of Bambaataa’s alleged victims on his YouTube channel, is a “government-paid agent provocateur” who is part of a conspiracy by the government, mainstream media and the global “1% capitalist powers that be.”

“It is all a diversion,” Torain told The News, stifling a laugh. “It is a smoke screen.”

The organization founded by Bambaataa to promote art and unity in the hip-hop community promises it will soon issue a statement that shows “how the N.Y. Daily News and its so-called objective reporters have been compromised and controlled by U.S. government intelligence.”

Last week’s statement called former music industry executive and Democratic Party activist Ronald Savage “mentally challenged.” Savage, 50, accused Bambaataa of sexually abusing him in 1980. His lawyer Louis Sepulveda said he may sue the Zulu Nation this week for defamation.

Universal Zulu Nation spokesman Quadeer Shakur declined to discuss the allegations against Bambaataa when contacted by The News.

But the statement issued by Zulu Nation notes that the organization, deemed a street gang by police, was expelled from the Bronx River Houses during a 1995 crackdown on graffiti and crime.

The sexual abuse allegations, the statement said, are just the latest chapter in the attack on the organization that began 20 years ago.

“We have no doubt that a combination of our ever-growing international . . . chapters throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, North America and our ongoing diplomatic relationships with the anti-imperialist people’s governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Tanzania have all no doubt made us a COINTELPRO (the FBI’s at times illegal domestic spying program) target by the U.S. government, mainstream media and the global 1% capitalist powers that be,” the statement said.