Malik Fard Muhammad
Biography
During the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Malik Muhammad, a disabled army veteran with extreme PTSD, threw a Molotov Cocktail at police officers. Court evidence suggested he bought the Molotov Cocktail ingredients in advance and distributed baseball bats to the BLM crowd to fight police officers. For this and other charges, Muhammad was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison followed by 3 years of supervised release.
In 2024, Muhammad requested to speak with a prison supervisor when he was forced off the phone so a white inmate could take his place. For this, Muhammad was tazed, beaten, and kept in solitary confinement for 250 days. This is despite the state of Oregon's (where he was kept) 90-day limit on solitary due to a controversial technicality. Many people accuse the prison authorities of racism for this unfair treatment. He is now staging hunger strikes to draw attention to this treatment.
Malik Fard Muhammed, 24, was arrested on October 11, 2020 in Portland, OR after police saw him smashing windows with a metal baton. On two September 2020 nights he used growlers as Molotov cocktails thrown at police; one officer's leg caught fire when a flaming bottle exploded into a fireball at the Multnomah County Justice Center on September 23, 2020. DNA analysis linked him to a Molotov cocktail thrown at another September protest. He was sentenced to 10 years federal prison and 3 years supervised release.
Current custody
In 2026 Oregon transferred Muhammad to South Carolina. His current South Carolina Department of Corrections number is 400523; his former Oregon number was 23935744.
Birth-year evidence
The June 1, 2021 Justice Department release identifies Malik Fard Muhammad as 24. This supports birth in 1996 or 1997; c. 1997 is an approximate age-derived year, not an exact birthday. The reported age is anchored in the 2021 charging release, not assumed to describe his age at the 2020 incident.
