Services, a home health organization. The city council approved the funds.

Nedir Bey addresses the Oakland City Council in 1996.

By Katy Murphy and Cecily Burt, The Chauncey Bailey Project

OAKLAND — Nedir Bey, a “spiritually adopted” son of Your Black Muslim Bakery founder Yusuf Bey, has withdrawn a request to open a public charter school in West Oakland.

Bey, who owes the city of Oakland more than $1.5 million, recently had asked the school board to allow him to open a publicly funded, independently run middle school named Marcus Garvey Public Charter School, on San Pablo Avenue near 27th Street.

Bey withdrew his request last week in a one-sentence letter without an explanation.

As reported in the Tribune, Bey launched a failed health care company with more than $1.5 million of city money that he never repaid. Natalie Bayton, listed as a member of the proposed charter school’s board of directors, voted to give Bey the money when she served on the Oakland City Council in 1996.

Two years earlier, Bey was charged with abducting and torturing a man who ran afoul of the bakery in 1994. He pleaded no contest to a felony charge of false imprisonment.

Bey also received public financing for his failed 2002 run for City Council. An investigation into campaign finance fraud languished for five years at the state Fair Political Practices Commission before it was dropped because too much time had elapsed.

Despite his checkered past, Bey once was a school site council leader at Fruitvale Elementary School.

Bey’s first name is spelled “Nedar” throughout the charter school petition and is signed as such on his one-sentence withdrawal letter. He also used his birth name, Victor Foster, on the articles of incorporation for the charter school.

Oakland school district spokesman Troy Flint wouldn’t say whether the district’s charter school office encouraged Bey to take the request off the table.