By Charlene Muhammad -National Correspondent- Final Call | May 1, 2012
(This is the first in a series of articles examining the plight and problem of political prisoners inside the United States.)
Campaigns to free aging revolutionaries and
activists have highlighted the reality that political prisoners exist in
the United States.
Advocates insist political, law enforcement
and corrections officials want to mask decades of parole denials, years
of inhumane solitary confinement and episodes of domestic torture
inflicted on Blacks and others for challenging racism and oppression.
“The main thing we need to understand is the
fact that these soldiers—and they are soldiers—are not in prison because
they’re criminals. They’re in prison for daring to stand up to this
rotten, no good system that we live under,” said Ramona Africa, minister
of information for the MOVE Organization, the Philadelphia-based group
founded by John Africa.
Ms. Africa is a former political prisoner, who
survived the May 1985 bombing of her family by the Philadelphia police.
In 1985, a battle ensued after police tried to arrest MOVE members on
charges related to the 1978 death of a police officer. Five children and
six adults died in the bombing. Nine members of MOVE were imprisoned.
Ramona Africa was jailed for seven years. Debbie Africa died in prison.
The remaining members have been in prison for nearly 30 years. MOVE
members take the surname “Africa” as part of their beliefs.
Although MOVE members have served the minimum
sentence, they are continuously denied parole because they won’t lie and
say they’re guilty, Ramona Africa said.
Members of the Black Panther Party are arrested in 1970. Photo: libcom.org
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Similar parole denials are occurring across the U.S. The denials are
based on politics, not lack of prison time, threats to society or
troublemaking inside penal institutions, according to advocates.
Officials want to contain and punish these highly politicized inmates,
most of whom are in their 50s and 60s, advocates add.
“When (political prisoners) go to parole board
hearings, prosecutors aren’t launching legal appeals, but emotional
appeals by bringing out police, firemen, family members, all saying he
or she should stay in,” said Francisco Torres, a onetime Black Panther.
Last year the courts finally dropped accusations that he murdered a
police officer in 1971.
But not only have political prisoners done their time, their behavior in prison has been exemplary, say advocates.
Many have quelled prison riots and in some instances, wardens have commended them.
“They’ve gotten certificates and diplomas in
prison so when it’s time for them to get out, they’re told they’re being
held in there because of their politics basically, their beliefs and
their thoughts,” Mr. Torres said.
Veronza Bowers, Jr., who served his entire
sentence, was labeled a threat to society and denied release under the
George W. Bush-era Patriot Act, which expanded police powers. The former
Black Panther Party member was convicted of killing a park ranger on
the testimony of two informants and has been incarcerated for 37 years
now in Atlanta.
Criminals or prisoners of war?
There’s no debate, said Ramona Africa, about
the guilt or innocence of freedom fighters like American Indian Movement
leader Leonard Peltier, who was at Pine Ridge, S.D., when government
officials attacked, she said. Two federal agents died in a shootout at
the reservation, and Mr. Peltier was labeled a terrorist, said Ms.
Africa. He has been imprisoned since 1976 and is serving time in a
federal prison in Florida
“This is getting more and more outrageous
because we the people have not stood up like we should,
uncompromisingly, and refused to accept it,” Ms. Africa charged.
“I mean, my family was bombed! A bomb was
dropped on our home. Babies were burned alive and I know a lot of people
are outraged. They were and still are but it’s not enough to just have
those feelings. We have to act on those feelings,” Ms. Africa said.
Some say it’s hard to keep track of 1960s and
1970s freedom fighters with people facing bleak economic times and
struggling day-to-day to survive. “MOVE understands that but all we’re
saying is that we have to put a priority on our freedom and our lives.
If we don’t do that, how are we going to expect our enemy to do that,
have any kind of value for our lives, our freedom, if we don’t?” Ms.
Africa said.
The war on Black liberation
Most political prisoners in the United States
stem from repressive and oppressive policies largely ushered in during
1960s and 1970s government targeting, surveillance, infiltration,
harassment and destruction of Black Liberation and progressive
organizations.
The case of late Black Panther leader Geronimo
Pratt is a textbook example of political targeting, say advocates. Mr.
Pratt, or Geronimo ji-Jaga, served 27 years in prison for a murder he
did not commit. The relentless effort of the late attorney Johnnie
Cochran and a tenacious campaign to free him succeeded in 1997 when his
conviction was vacated.
(l) Two members of the Angola 3 and Geronimo Pratt, inset. (r) Elaine Brown
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A former FBI agent said federal wiretaps placed Mr. Pratt hundreds of
miles away from the place where the murders occurred. In 1970, the FBI
office in Los Angeles targeted Mr. Pratt, a decorated Vietnam veteran
and local Panther minister of defense, seeking to neutralize him. Within
months he was facing murder charges. His supporters say ex-Panther
Julius Butler, who testified for the prosecution that Mr. Pratt told him
about the shooting of a White couple on a tennis court, was an FBI
informant. Mr. Pratt died in Tanzania last summer.
Attorney James Simmons, of Los Angeles-based
Human Rights Advocacy, is also the legal representative for political
prisoners Dr. Mutulu Shakur, in California, and Sundiata Acoli in
Maryland.
Dr. Shakur, who has been in prison since 1986,
and 10 others were charged in 1982 under U.S. conspiracy laws with
participating in armored car and bank robberies with a Black
paramilitary group. Mr. Acoli was convicted by an all- White jury in
1977 on charges of murdering a police officer.
Mr. Acoli, 79, has served 39 years in prison
and is up for parole, his attorney said. Dr. Shakur, 61, has an upcoming
parole hearing as well. Dr. Shakur is the stepfather of the late rapper
Tupac Shakur and became involved with the Republic of New Afrika and
the liberation struggle as a teenager.
From prison, he has advocated a South
African-style truth and reconciliation commission to reveal the
targeting of Black groups, highlight resistance efforts, and as a way to
free U.S. political prisoners. “Our movement must accept our sojourn of
struggle consisted of both legal and ‘illegal’ tactics (but legitimate
under international law). The context of the U.S. legal system is
designed to ignore on the one hand the oppression and on the other the
right of those to resist that oppression,” he wrote in an online paper.
Though a congressional committee documented
the illegal and repressive acts of the FBI and government agencies and
law enforcement’s subversive and
constitution-shredding Cointelpro,
which aimed to destroy Black and other groups pressing for major
changes in the Black Power-era, there is nothing to address “the freedom
of our PP’s or POW or that memorializes the history that provides a
relief for the victims of the quasi-apartheid system in the U.S.,”
observed Mr. Shakur.
Elaine Brown, former Black Panther Party
chairman, talked about two kinds of political prisoners. One might have
done something actively or consciously that caused them to be put into
prison or are doing something in prison that has caused them to suffer
extraordinary punishment by the prison system. Others are prisoners at
war, jailed because of their revolutionary work and because they choose
to fight back, such as Imam Jamil Al Amin, formerly known as Black
Panther leader H. Rap Brown, who fits all these categories, she said.
“Because of the work he was doing, organizing
the community in Atlanta, the district attorney actually said after he
was wrongfully convicted of killing an Atlanta sheriff, ‘We finally got
him after 24 years.’ Well, when you hear that kind of statement you know
this wasn’t really about the murder of a deputy sheriff because that
killing did not take place 24 years before,” Ms. Brown said.
Imam Al-Amin was convicted in the 2000
shooting of two Fulton County deputies, one died, in Atlanta. The
deputies were serving summons for a speeding ticket and another minor
charge. He is serving life in prison in Colorado and is among nearly 70
political prisoners documented by the Jericho Movement and other
national and international human rights groups.
“He is being held in the Supermax prison,
1,400 miles away, which makes traveling very costly. It essentially
takes a full day to travel there and another day to return home. It’s
really been a struggle, and we haven’t been able to visit as often as
we’d like. Florence is seen by many as a concentration camp for Muslim
inmates. Imam Jamil is handcuffed at the waist behind a glass when we
see him in one of the legal rooms,” said his wife Karima El-Amin, in a
2010 media interview. The imam is in a high security federal prison
though he was convicted on state charges.
Original members of The Black Panther Party.
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“On the days we are with him, we are able to visit for approximately six
hours. If he receives food during the visit, he has to hold his hands
chained in front of him in order to eat. It is a very difficult
position, and his wrists begin to swell,” said his wife, who is also an
attorney.
Supporters of the imam are still fighting for his release and fighting to have him brought to an institution closer to home.
Meanwhile, activists say far too many men and
women are still incarcerated, such as Hugo Dahariki Pinell and Russell
Maroon Shoatz, both locked in solitary confinement for 35-40 years now.
On May 5, artists, farmers, and New York-based
organizers will launch a campaign to free Mr. Shoatz, now 70. Campaign
organizers want him immediately released from solitary confinement, as
well as other prisoners in solitary who have been in prison for 25
years, and who are 50-plus years old.
“Humanity’s in question here and it’s about
what are we going to do. Are we going to help them?” said Jihad
Abdulmumit, co-chair of the Jericho Movement, which works on behalf of
political prisoners.
“Somebody is being snatched up right now. Just
like that! You or I could be charged for something we don’t know
anything about with no opportunity to gain access to information,” he
added. Mr. Abdulmumit was talking about changes in civil liberties laws,
court rules, use of secret evidence and other erosion of personal and
legal rights connected with the war on terror.
“It’s very oppressive and going on among the
Black Panthers, the Native American Movement, Puerto Rican nationalists,
White comrades, Students for the Democratic Society,” all on the front
lines dealing with White racism, he said.
From the more popularly-known, such as
journalist Mumia Abu Jamal and Mr. Peltier, to many lesser known-known
political prisoners, such as Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen We Langa or Mondo,
formerly known as David Rice and Ed Poindexter, known as the Omaha Two,
the fight is also for better medical care, support for their families
and money to survive.
The first focus is always legal, finding out
who is due for state or federal pardons or clemency, and the second is
to educate communities on the reality of political prisoners. The
government and media have convinced people U.S. political prisoners
don’t exist, Mr. Abdulmumit said.
“If somebody was able to capture people’s
attention without distraction for 15 minutes, I think there’ll be
millions of people demanding these people’s release,” Mr. Abdulmumit
said.
Worldwide and national attention helped to
free Robert King and get all charges dismissed against the San Francisco
8, Francisco Torres was the last SF8 defendant.
Mr. King served 31 years in Angola State
Prison in Louisiana and was freed in 2001 after an overturned
conviction. Amnesty International recently delivered a 65,000-signature
petition to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for the release of Albert
Woodfox and Herman Wallace. They have been jailed 40 years in solitary
confinement at Angola Prison on charges they and Mr. King, known as the
Angola 3, murdered a prison guard.
Human rights groups say truth is the men were
targeted because they dared form a Black Panther Party chapter to
organize Black men within the notorious prison. When a guard died in a
prison riot, the three men were falsely tied to the crime, say
supporters.
Solitary confinement and other pressures
Solitary confinement must be abolished and its
impact on prisoners can be physically and psychologically devastating,
said advocates. “It was legal to own slaves. It wasn’t until people saw
it as reprehensible that slavery ended,” observed Mr. King.
“We want to raise the bar for everyone. Herman
and Albert are not just victims of being held in solitary confinement
unjustly for that period of time ... They’re in prison unjustly,” Mr.
King continued.
He expects that at a May 29 federal hearing,
the judge will reverse Mr. Woodfox’ conviction and grant bond as has
been done before, but State Attorney General James “Buddy” Caldwell will
try to intercede again, but will be unsuccessful.
Mr. King also feels since the Angola 3 cases
are being viewed as one, Mr. Wallace’s may be reversed as well. That
means the men may not just be released from solitary confinement, but
released from prison altogether.
“Political prisoners should be released from
prison altogether because they’re there unjustly ... ending solitary
confinement is just one step,” said Mr. King.
Victory for the San Francisco 8 came August
18, 2011, when a judge dismissed the last charges against Mr. Torres. In
January 2007, Mr. Torres, and fellow Black Panther Party members were
arrested on murder charges for killing a police officer in 1971.
The men, who beat the charge in the 1970s,
were targeted under new anti-terror laws and with promises of new
evidence from prosecutors. The men were rounded up from across the
country, some living as respected solid citizens and others working as
community activists.
The case initially had been thrown out because
nothing connected any of the SF8 to the killing except confessions
derived from torturing three of them and testimony from a Panther who
they suspected was a government informant.
“Police tortured people in the most horrific
fashion, comparable to tortures inflicted at Abu Ghraib and other
places,” said Attorney Simmons. In the 1970s, these men were water
boarded, had scouring water poured over towels placed on their bodies,
were suffocated, beaten, and had cattle prods poked into their genitals,
necks and under arms, among other things, he continued.
The torture back then implicated not just the
New Orleans Police Department, which held the men, but the interrogation
was overseen by the Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York Police
Departments and the FBI, he added.
But when the case was brought back 36 years
later, no new evidence ever surfaced, according to Atty. Simmons. There
was little publicity when the final charges were dropped, though there
had been a barrage of news coverage when the case was brought back.
“We knew they were not going to grant us
complete victory in the courtroom because they didn’t want us to cheer,”
said Mr. Torres, who learned about the decision in a phone call from
his lawyer. “There were highs and lows in the case and when you deal
with these people, you never know the end until you can really see the
end because they’re always coming back at you in some other way and
form,” Mr. Torres told The Final Call.
He is working now to get other comrades out of
prison, particularly because the majority have satisfied requirements
for parole and jumped through all the legal hoops.
Related news:
Government infiltration threatens rights and freedom, warn analysts (FCN, 09-21-2010)
Cointelpro 2009: FBI up to old dirty tricks? (FCN, 04-18-2009)
Nation of Islam Targeted by Homeland Security (FCN, 12-24-2009)
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