Dhoruba al-Mujahid bin Wahad (born Richard Earl Moore; 1944) is an American writer and activist, Black Panther Party leader and co-founder of the Black Liberation Army. Dhoruba, in Swahili, means "the storm". Early years Richard Earl Moore was three years into a five-year sentence at Comstock Prison when he learned Malcolm X had been assassinated. Moore, who had a spotty disciplinary record at Comstock, felt the Nation of Islam was dogmatic and valued myrmidons rather than free thinkers, but he admired Malcolm X, who he felt "wasn't just a bow tie, a talking head. He was funny; he was witty; he was analytical." Moore had been reading Malcolm X's teachings and speeches and had considered joining with Malcolm X's army after being released from prison, and was stunned by Malcolm X's public execution. Like many others, black and white alike, Moore believed Malcolm X had been killed by a combination of enemies in the Nation of Islam and law enforcement, and Moore decided the best way to honor his hero's legacy was "to think like Malcolm X, and take his message and apply it to his daily reality." Consequently, Moore converted to Islam, took the name Dhoruba al-Mujahid bin Wahad, and began reading political material, including both non-fiction (such as Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Karl Marx's Das Kapital) as well as historical fiction (such as Leon Uris's Exodus and novels about Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan). The shooting On May 19, 1971, Thomas Curry and Nicholas Binetti, two New York City Police Department officers who were guarding the home of Frank S. Hogan, the Manhattan district attorney, were fired upon in a drive-by shooting, with a machine gun. The officers survived, but were seriously injured, sustaining shots to the head, neck, chest, and abdomen. The shootings took place during a period of intense violence between black activist organizations and the New York City police department. Two days later, NYPD officers Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini were shot and killed outside a housing project in Harlem. Wahad was arrested and initially charged with robbing a South Bronx social club, and then was later charged with the attempted murders of Curry and Binetti. Wahad's first trial ended in a hung jury; his second in a mistrial. Two years later, in 1973, his third trial resulted in a guilty verdict; he was