Your Black Muslim Bakery follower gets 10 years in torture, kidnap case
Avenal Ave. house in East Oakland where a woman was tortured in 2007 (Oakland Tribune)
OAKLAND — Your Black Muslim Bakery follower Yusuf Bey V was sentenced to 10 years in state prison Friday for his role in the May 2007 highway kidnapping of two women and the torture of one of them.
Bey V, 24, pleaded guilty in June 2009 to one count of kidnapping and testified in the torture case last year against another bakery follower, Richard Lewis. Lewis was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The sentence from Judge Carrie Panetta was a result of Bey V’s agreement to testify. The Oakland man received credit for more than four years time served and good behavior in county jail.
The victims in the case, a mother and daughter, did not appear in court. Bey V, clad in a red-and-white striped jail uniform, did not speak.
Bey V testified in the Lewis trail that he had beaten the woman with the butt of a revolver as she sat handcuffed in a chair with a bag over her head in an abandoned East Oakland house. His half-brother, bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV, orchestrated the attack after being told the daughter knew where a drug dealer hid money.
The plan, Bey V said, was to rob the dealer to help save the bakery, which has since been liquidated in bankruptcy proceedings.
Bey IV, 25, claimed the dealer had $500,000 stashed away, Bey V testified.
But the woman didn’t know where the money was, she testified during Lewis’ trial, and feared she would be killed. She said she was beaten and cut with a knife, threatened with a hot curling iron and told she would be burned to death. She was rescued when a police officer looking for a stolen car happened past the house and her attackers fled.
Bey IV is to be tried in the case after his upcoming trial on charges of ordering the slaying of journalist Chauncey Bailey and two other men killed in 2007. Juror questioning begins in that case Monday.
Another bakery member, Tamon Halfin, 25, is to be tried with Bey IV in the kidnapping case. A fifth defendant, Joshua Bey, pleaded guilty to kidnapping in 2008 and testified against Lewis. He is also expected to testify against Bey IV.
Joshua Bey agreed to a three-year sentence in exchange for his testimony and is scheduled for a court hearing this month.
Contact investigative reporter Thomas Peele at tpeele@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/thomas_peele.