7 Muslims Arrested in Death of Oakland Newspaper Editor

OAKLAND, Calif., Aug. 3 — A day after a prominent newspaper editor was shot to death downtown, the police here on Friday arrested seven men and seized several weapons that they suspected were used in his killing and those of two other men.

Oakland police officials said they suspected that the men were part of a group operating “a very violent criminal enterprise” out of a neighborhood bakery.

The arrests came after a predawn raid by SWAT teams at the bakery, the Your Black Muslim Bakery, and three bakery-owned properties, where the police found several firearms, including the gun they believe was used to kill the editor, Chauncey Bailey, of the weekly Oakland Post.

Mr. Bailey, 57, was shot several times at close range on Thursday morning at a busy intersection near the Alameda County courthouse here. He had been working on an article for the newspaper about possible links between the bakery and several killings in the area, said Walter Riley, a lawyer for the newspaper’s publisher, Paul Cobb.

Efforts to reach a lawyer for the bakery were unsuccessful. The phone at the bakery was disconnected.

One of seven men arrested on Friday was Yusef Bey IV, the son of the bakery’s founder, Yusef Bey, a well-known local black Muslim leader who died in 2003. The six other men arrested on Friday were not identified by the police, nor were two suspects who were still being sought.

The police said the raid came after a lengthy investigation of other crimes, including two kidnappings on a single day in May, and two killings in July that occurred in the same north Oakland neighborhood where the bakery is located. The police had connected those crimes and put the bakery under surveillance before Mr. Bailey was killed.


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