Existing comment:
Free All Political Prisoners!
Mutulu Shakur
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mutulu Shakur (born Jeral Wayne Williams; August 8, 1950) is an American activist and former member of the Black Liberation Army, sentenced to sixty years in prison for his involvement in a 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored truck in which a guard and two police officers were murdered.
Shakur was politically active as a teen with the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and later the black separatist movement the Republic of New Afrika. He was the stepfather of slain actor and rap artist Tupac Shakur.
H. Rap Brown
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (born Hubert Gerold Brown; October 4, 1943), formerly known as H. Rap Brown, was the fifth chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s, and during a short-lived (six months) alliance between SNCC and the Black Panther Party, he served as their minister of justice.
He is perhaps most famous for his proclamations during that period that "violence is as American as cherry pie" and that "If America don't come around, we're gonna burn it down." He is also known for his autobiography, Die Nigger Die! He is currently serving a life sentence for murder following the shooting of two Fulton County Sheriff's deputies in 2000. Later another man confessed to committing the murder but this was rejected by courts.
Jalil Muntaqim
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jalil Abdul Muntaqim (born Anthony Jalil Bottom on October 18, 1951) is a former member of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Black Liberation Army (BLA). In August 1971, he was arrested in California along with Albert "Nuh" Washington and Herman Bell and were charged with the killing of two NYPD police officers, Waverly Jones and Joseph A. Piagentini, in New York City on May 21. In 1974, he was convicted on two counts of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with possible parole after 22 years. Muntaqim has been the subject of attention for being repeatedly denied parole despite being eligible since 1993. In June 2020, Muntaqim was reportedly sick with Coronavirus disease. He was released from prison on October 7, 2020, after over 49 years of incarceration and 11 parole denials.
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Sundiata Acoli
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sundiata Acoli (born January 14, 1937, as Clark Edward Squire) is a former member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1974 for murdering a New Jersey state trooper.
Mumia Abu-Jamal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook; April 24, 1954) is a political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He became widely known while on death row for his writings and commentary on the criminal justice system in the United States. After numerous appeals, his death penalty sentence was overturned by a Federal court. In 2011, the prosecution agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He entered the general prison population early the following year.
Beginning at the age of 14 in 1968, Abu-Jamal became involved with the Black Panther Party and was a member until October 1970. After he left the party, he completed his high school education, and later became a radio reporter. He eventually served as president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. He supported the MOVE Organization in Philadelphia and covered the 1978 confrontation in which one police officer was killed. The MOVE Nine were the members who were arrested and convicted of murder in that case.
Since 1982, the murder trial of Abu-Jamal has been seriously criticized for constitutional failings; some have claimed that he is innocent, and many opposed his death sentence. The Faulkner family, public authorities, police organizations, and other groups believe that Abu-Jamal's trial was fair, his guilt undeniable, and his death sentence appropriate.
When his death sentence was overturned by a Federal court in 2001, he was described as "perhaps the world's best-known death-row inmate" by The New York Times. During his imprisonment, Abu-Jamal has published books and commentaries on social and political issues; his first book was Live from Death Row (1995).
Jaan Laaman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jaan Karl Laaman (born 1948) is an American political activist and criminal convicted of various charges, including a 1982 attempted murder of a police officer. He was a member of the United Freedom Front.
Laaman grew up in Roxbury, Massachusetts and Buffalo, New York. His family emigrated to the United States from Estonia when he was a child. He has a son. He is currently serving a 53-year prison sentence for his role in the bombings of United States government buildings while a member of the United Freedom Front, an American leftist group in the 1980s.
Leonard Peltier
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) is an American activist and convicted murderer. An activist for Native American civil rights and an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa, he joined the American Indian Movement in 1972. Since 1977, he has been imprisoned for the murder in 1975 of two FBI agents at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. His people include Lakota and Dakota ancestors.
Rice–Poindexter case
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Rice (1947 – March 11, 2016) (also known as Mondo we Langa) and Edward Poindexter were charged and convicted of the murder of Omaha Police Officer Larry Minard. Minard died when a suitcase bomb containing dynamite exploded in a North Omaha home on August 17, 1970. Officer John Tess was also injured in the explosion. Rice died on March 11, 2016. He was 68 years old and had been in poor health.
Poindexter and Rice had been members of the Black Panther Party, and their case was, and continues to be, controversial. The Omaha Police recommended withholding exculpatory evidence, a tape of a 911 call, from being played at the trial. The two men had been targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), which operated against and infiltrated anti-war and civil rights groups, including the Omaha Black Panthers. Amnesty International has been following the case and recommended a retrial or release for Rice and Poindexter. The state's parole board have recommended the men for release, but political leaders have not acted on these recommendations. |