Political prisoners
Join dozens of organizations, academics and activists to
endorse this letter to Ban Ki-Moon, including the National Lawyers Guild, the
Palestinian Youth Network, UK MP George Galloway and many more! See full list of
initial endorsers below......
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In 2004, the NAACP voted unanimously (with one "nay" vote) to "reiterate its support of the international movement for a new and fair trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal." Yet the organization has done nothing since that time to ensure justice for Mumia....
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We'll be closing down the petition around June 26 so that data can be compiled for delivery to the U.S. Parole Commission. So don't wait. Do it now. Not sure if you've signed? Sign again. Any duplicates will be deleted before the signatures are submitted to the Parole Commission....
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Kari Ann Cowan, Peltier's niece, reported on July 19 from the prison at
Lewisburg that Leonard may have suffered a heart attack. She stated, "He
had a hard time breathing. He was in his cell and had an ache in his chest. He
was kinda scared he was having a heart attack. He raised his hands, breathed
slowly and finally felt better."...
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Leonard Peltier, a fighter for the liberation of the Indigenous peoples of
North America and the world, has been locked away in federal prison for more
than three decades....
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The US Supreme Court announced today that it will not review the case of the
Five Cuban Patriots. This decision denies our 5 brothers, unjustly imprisoned
from more than a decade for monitoring terrorist organizations based in Miami,
from ever having the possibility of an impartial and just trial outside
Miami....
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More than 100 vigils, rallies, marches and other actions were held across
the U.S. and in other countries worldwide on May 19 in support of Troy Anthony
Davis, the Georgia man facing execution for a crime he has always denied
committing....
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Troy Davis is an African American on death row in Georgia. Davis was
convicted in the 1989 killing of a police officer despite what Amnesty
International calls "overwhelming doubts about his guilt....
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On May 19, from Alaska to West Virginia and from Argentina to Uganda, high
school and college students, faith-based groups and progressive community
organizations are organizing vigils, rallies and petition drives as well as the
vital means of communication to bring worldwide pressure on Georgia Gov. Sonny
Perdue and the Pardons and Parole Board to stop the execution of Troy Anthony
Davis....
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The struggle to free death-row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is heating up in New York City. On May 8, an emergency, militant street meeting took place in front of Harlem’s Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building to demand that elected officials call upon U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department to conduct a civil rights investigation into constitutional rights violations against Mumia. Congressperson Charles Rangel, who represents the Harlem community, has come out in support of the call for the investigation....
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In the aftermath of the April 12 sniper killings of three Somali teenagers by the U.S. Navy, several U.S. agencies met on April 17 to conduct a review of military and foreign policy toward this Horn of Africa nation. The State Department, Pentagon and Justice Department have outlined a series of options
to ostensibly fight "piracy" in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean....
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Following are excerpts from an e-mail campaign launched on April 15 by the New York Free Mumia Coalition, International Concerned Family and Friends
of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Millions for Mumia and the International Action Center. To date hundreds of thousands of emails have been sent to U.S. Attorney General
Eric Holder, President Barack Obama, congressional leaders, and the media to demand that the Justice Department initiate a civil rights investigation addressing a 27-year history of prosecutorial and judicial violations of Mumia's constitutional rights....
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Political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal will be 55 on April 24. His family, friends and supporters are observing the day with a worldwide "Honk for
Mumia" and other displays of resistance to demand freedom for this world-famous African-American journalist held on Pennsylvania's death row....
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While May Day has historically been a day of workers solidarity and a
celebration of labor power, this is not a day or year like any other....
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On April 6, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Mumia
Abu-Jamal's appeal for a new guilt-phase trial. The
Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to consider the Philadelphia DA's separate appeal, which is attempting to execute Abu-Jamal WITHOUT a new sentencing hearing. In
response to yesterday's rejection, Abu-Jamal's lead
attorney, Robert R. Bryan, will be filing a "petition for re-hearing" in the U.S. Supreme Court....
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Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba's Parliament, speaking in
Havana, denounced the U.S. and international corporate media for their silence
regarding the massive international support for the petition to the U.S.
Supreme Court to hear the case of the Cuban Five....
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The U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments on as few as 100 cases per year,
although thousands are submitted. The briefs submitted support a full
examination of the legal issues in both cases....
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In collaboration with the International Action Center, City Councilor Chuck
Turner has launched a new phase of his "Campaign for Truth, Light and
Justice," focusing national and international attention not just on
frame-up charges against Turner but also on eight years of corrupt practices by
the Bush administration's Department of "Justice."...
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The central issue in this case is racism in jury selection. The prosecution systematically removed people from sitting on the trial jury purely because of the color of their skin, that is, being black. The bigotry that killed Martin Luther King, Jr., so many years ago, has been rampant in the case of my client and is a central part of the state's quest to murder him in the name of the law....
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Today, February 6, is the 33rd anniversary of Leonard Peltier's
arrest.Time to set him free... Because it is the RIGHT thing to do....
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I want to thank each and everyone of you for your efforts in my urgent time of need, you cannot imagine how much my spirit has been lifted from the cards and letters, the phone calls and how everyone kept up the pressure. My gratitude is really more than I can express. My return to Lewisburg was met like a hero’s welcome, and many people came to assure me of my safety there. It is so ironic that the prisoners in a federal maximum-security prison can guarantee my safety, but the Bureau of Prisons will not. I did not say, “cannot”, but “will not” do so. You have to remember the BOP is a little brother to the FBI and they came from an illegitimate mother called the JUST-US (Justice) Department.
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Leonard has been transferred back to USP-Lewisburg and released to the
general population....
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Internationally known Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier has been victimized and brutalized since being transferred to U.S. Penitentiary Canaan in Pennsylvania on January 14....
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From five prisons scattered throughout the bowels of the United States, we condemn this
crime with all our strength; we demand that the barbarity stop now and we send all of our love and support from the deepest part of our souls to the beloved Palestinian people. We will be with you today and always. If there is one thing that profoundly hurts us about our imprisonment it is that we cannot do much more for you, for your cause, for our peoples, but we trust that soon we will be able to accompany you physically....
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I am so OUTRAGED! My brother Leonard was severely beaten upon his arrival at the Canaan Federal Penitentiary. When he went into population after his transfer, some inmates assaulted him. The severity of his injuries is that he suffered numerous blows to his head and body, receiving a large bump on his head, possibly a concussion, and numerous bruises. Also, one of his fingers is swollen and discolored and he has pain in his chest and ribcage. There was blood everywhere from his injuries....
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The International Action Center and Fight Imperialism-Stand Together (FIST) strongly condemn the fatal shooting of 22 year-old African-American father, Oscar Grant, by BART cop Johannes Mehserle, Jan. 1 at the Fruitvale station in Oakland, Calif. Grant was forced off the train at 2 a.m. with others and forced to lie face down on the ground. While he was laying face down, Mehserle pulled his gun from its holster and shot Grant in the back....
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Life-long civil rights advocate Ramsey Clark, winner of the 2008 United Nations Human Rights Award and founder of the International Action Center, held a press conference in front of the JFK Federal Building here on Dec. 17 to defend Chuck Turner, an African-American community leader and five-term Boston city councilor, against racist frame-up charges from U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan....
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Mumia Abu-Jamal remains on Pennsylvania’s death row. Last week marked the 27th anniversary of his unjust imprisonment. Racism, fraud and politics have been threads that have run through the case since its inception, and continue today....
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Dec. 6 will be a day of international solidarity to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. It
is sorely needed. Lynne Abraham, the Philadelphia district attorney known as
“the deadliest D.A. in the U.S.,” is calling on the U.S. Supreme
Court to reinstate Abu-Jamal's death sentence despite mounds of evidence
showing his innocence....
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Every year since 1970, United American Indians of New England have organized
the National Day of Mourning observance in Plymouth at noon on Thanksgiving Day. Every year, hundreds of Native people and our supporters from all four
directions join us. Every year, including this year, Native people from
throughout the Americas will speak the truth about our history and about current issues and struggles we are involved in....
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The government's witch hunt and persecution of the San Francisco 8 continue unabated despite growing public support to drop the charges and release the former Black Panther Party members....
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On Monday, October 27, Troy Davis, an African American on death row in Georgia, is scheduled to be legally lynched by the state of Georgia. Davis was
convicted in the 1989 killing of a police officer despite what Amnesty International calls "overwhelming doubts about his guilt."...
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There are new developments in the case of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is on Pennsylvania's death row, that are the most significant and deadly since his 1981 arrest....
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U.S. troops in Afghanistan shot Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and took her into custody in July. She lies in solitary confinement in the Manhattan
Detention Center, with an open scar from her sternum to her lower abdomen. She has not seen her lawyer, Elizabeth Fink, because if she leaves her cell she faces an excruciating strip search....
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The Jersey 4 are young African-American lesbians from Newark, N.J., who were
convicted of "gang assault" charges in June 2007 after defending themselves against a man who attacked them and three of their friends in August 2006....
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Actor Danny Glover sent the following message of solidarity on Sept. 13
to the concert "Five Stars and One Song" held in New York in support of the Cuban 5....
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The International Action Center condemns the U.S. silencing of Mrs. Masood
"disappeared" of
Pakistan. The United States Department of Homeland Security has cowardly
revoked the travel visa for Amna Masood Janjua. She was prevented from
traveling to the US to meet with human rights organizations and members of
Congress by US agents who boarded the plane she was on, forcing her off. ...
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I have watched with keen interest and renewed hope as your campaign has mobilized millions of Americans behind your message of changing a political system that serves a small economic elite at the expense of the peoples of the
United States and the world. Your election as president of the United States, where slaves and Indians were long considered less than human under the law, will undoubtedly constitute a historic moment in race relations in the United
States....
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There has been extensive news attention to the ongoing federal proceedings concerning my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal, on the hotly contested issue of racism in jury selection and the ordering of a new jury trial on the question of life or death. (Abu-Jamal v. Horn, 520 F.3d 272 (3rd Cir. 2008).) The massive issue of racism will be presented to the U.S. Supreme Court later this year. However, few are aware that we have been actively litigating separate issues concerning fraud and the subornation of perjury by the Philadelphia Police Department and the District Attorney of Philadelphia. We are now before the Supreme Court regarding this governmental misconduct which resulted in Mumia being convicted and sentenced to death.
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The Cuban Five are five Cuban men who are in U.S. prisons,
serving four life sentences and 75 years collectively, after being arrested in
September 1998 and wrongly convicted in U.S. federal court in Miami in
2001....
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(RHC)—Senator Yeidckol Polevnsky Gurwitz of the Mexican Senate has added her name to the list of international politicians, activists and cultural and artistic personalities who are urging the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice to grant visas without further delay to Adriana Perez and Olga Salanueva, whose husbands, Gerardo Hernandez and René Gonzalez are serving prison sentences in US gaols for infiltrating
terrorist groups in Miami. ...
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More than two weeks after being granted bond by a federal judge, Sami Al-Arian is still being held in prison. In fact, Dr. Al-Arian is now being subjected to the worst treatment by prison officials
since his stay in Coleman Federal Penitentiary in Florida three years ago....
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Today our Petition for Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc, submitted on behalf of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal, was denied by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Simply put, we did not receive the needed majority vote from the nine sitting judges; at least five votes for a rehearing were necessary. However, Justice Thomas L. Ambro continues to urge the granting of relief on the issue of racism in jury selection. ...
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Dear Friends of the Cuban Five: For more than ten years, Adriana and Gerardo have not been able to see each other. Olga and René have also been denied the right to family visits, since August 2000.
This is due to the cruel and unjustified refusal by the U.S. government to grant entry visas to the wives of two of the Cuban Five.
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United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia On June 27, 2008, I submitted on behalf of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Petition for Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Yesterday it was deemed "filed" by the court following rulings on related motions. The focus of the Petition is the issue of racism in jury selection. If unsuccessful, we will proceed to the United States Supreme Court...
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With the attainment of the required delegates to claim the Democratic Party's nomination for U.S. president, Sen. Barack H. Obama (D-IL) has written a new page in American history....
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There apparently is still confusion regarding the March 27 federal decision. A new jury trial was ordered on the question of whether the penalty should be life or death. The court did not rule that Mumia should receive a life sentence as some have stated. The penalty-phase was reversed because the trial judge gave misleading and unconstitutional jury instructions. Nonetheless, I expect far greater gains.
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A national press conference to demand the immediate release of Dr. Sami Al-Arian was held at the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial, Educational and Cultural Center in Harlem on April 15. Al-Arian was in the 44th day of a hunger strike to demand that the government abide by the terms of his release. He has been imprisoned for more than five years....Al-Arian, a tenured professor at the University of South Florida, was
arrested in 2003. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft trumpeted it as the
"arrest of the most dangerous financier of Islamic Jihad in the Western
world." This case of a Palestinian who raised funds for orphans and charities back home is viewed as one of the most extreme examples of racist and anti-Muslim persecution....
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Over a thousand people voiced their collective outrage here April 19 that political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal was once again denied the right to a fair hearing by an injustice system determined to keep this innocent man imprisoned for life if it can&'t silence him outright through execution....
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Rainbow Flags for Mumia is a coalition of lesbian, gay, bi and trans people and organizations that came together in 1999 to demand a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal. The following are excerpts from a call issued by RF4M
organizers Imani Henry and LeiLani Dowell to help raise awareness and solidarity with the Free Mumia rally in Philadelphia on April 19....
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In his new book, O'Connor argues that Abu-Jamal was clearly framed by police, and that the actual shooter was a man named Kenneth Freeman. O'Connor criticizes the local media, who, he says, "bought into the prosecution's story line early on and has never been able to see this case for what it is: a framing of an innocent and peace-loving man."...
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Friday, April 11, is the scheduled release date of Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian professor on a hunger strike, who has been imprisoned for more than five years. But the Department of Justice, through its continuous abuse of the grand jury system, is threatening to keep him imprisoned for many years....
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This Legal Update is made on behalf of my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who remains on Pennsylvania’s death row. Many people have inquired as to our
reaction and position concerning recent legal developments, and what will happen now. This should answer many of those questions and alleviate some of the confusion....
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There is considerable documentation of the extremely
"irregular" decision making by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. See the...minority position in the Third Circuit ruling. We must expose the conspiracy to convict
Mumia, to deny him a new trial, and to have him either executed or imprisoned
for life. We will not accept their decision. Into
the streets for our brother, Mumia, and for ourselves!!!...
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The following statement was issued on March 29 by Pam Africa,
coordinator of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia
Abu-Jamal, on the March 28, 2008 court ruling by the three-judge panel of the Third
Circuit of Appeals....
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Emergency protests took place in a number of cities March 28, 2008, the day after a 2
to 1 court ruling March 27 made by the 3rd Circuit of Appeals that upheld the
guilty verdict in the case of death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and called for a resentencing hearing due to flawed jury instructions in the original trial....
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A ruling by the three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting Mumia Abu-Jama's appeals has left supporters outraged and
convinced that, for this internationally known political prisoner, there is no chance for a "fair trial" within the U.S. injustice system....
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THE THIRD CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS HAS RULED AGAINST A NEW TRIAL FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL. THEY HAVE CALLED FOR A SENTENCING HEARING WHICH CAN RESULT IN EITHER AN EXECUTION OR LIFE IN PRISON WITHOUT PAROLE.DAY AFTER PLANS ARE IN EFFECT
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As news flashed of the formal resignation of Cuba's Fidel Castro from the office of the President, morbid celebrations broke out in "Little Havana"(Miami), Florida, the U.S. capital of the Cuban exiled, anti-Castro movement. Just as they rejoiced at his illness in 2006, they reveled at his resignation....
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The issues in this case concern the right to a fair trial, the struggle against the death penalty, and the political repression of a
courageous writer and ournalist. My goal is to
win a new and fair trial for Mumia, and a jury acquittal upon his retrial. I want him to go home to his family. Nevertheless, Mumia is in great danger, for if all is lost he will be executed. We must never forget that racism, fraud, and politics are threads that have run through this case since the beginning and continue today....
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A federal judge here on Jan. 28 sentenced Ricardo Palmera, a peace negotiator for the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces-People's Army (FARC-EP), to 60 years in prison without parole....
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Earlier this month the federal government issued a statement in which they labeled Joanne Chesimard, known to most in the Black community as Assata
Shakur, as a domestic terrorist. In so doing, they also increased the bounty on
her head from $150,000 to an unprecedented $1,000,000. Viewed through the lens
of U.S. law enforcement, Shakur is an escaped cop-killer. Viewed through the
lens of many Black people, including me, she is a wrongly convicted woman and a hero of epic proportions....
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March 2005 marked one year since the filing of the last appeal in the case of the Cuban Five. The Five are Cubans who were arrested in 1998 in the U.S. The U.S.
government charged the Five with engaging in espionage against military bases
and threatening "national security." The Cubans were trying to monitor and prevent terror attacks from U.S. soil against their island nation. ...
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Puerto Ricans have resisted U.S. culture and the imposition of English-only
in schools, and over the years have formed liberation organizations such as the
Nationalist Party, the FALN and the Macheteros. Now the movement and its allies
are calling for the FBI and the U.S. Navy to get out of Puerto Rico. International solidarity is needed....
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Victor Toro Ramerez fought the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Now he is fighting deportation from the U.S., and is linking his own struggle
to that of all undocumented workers....
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Leonard Peltier -- a great-grandfather, artist, writer, & indigenous rights activist -- is a citizen of the Anishinabe and Dakota/Lakota Nations who has been unjustly imprisoned since 1976....
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On Dec. 9, 1981, Abu-Jamal was driving a taxi when he saw that police had stopped his brother. He got out of the car to make sure police were not
violating his brother's civil rights.In the altercation that followed, Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was shot and killed. Witnesses saw a man flee the scene who did not look like Abu-Jamal. But when police arrived, they arrested Mumia Abu-Jamal, who had also been shot....
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Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on Pennsylvania's death row for over a quarter of a century.
His 1982 conviction for the shooting death of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel
Faulkner, has been contested by jurists, human rights organizations, and peoples
of conscience the world over. Even though he is arguably the most famous political
prisoner in the United States, his case and struggle for justice distills many
of the issues that racially stigmatized groups and others have faced in the United
States for decades: police brutality and violence, racist applications of the
death penalty, prosecutorial misconduct, suborning of witnesses, and the use of
wealth and political privilege in criminal justice systems to service the ideological
interests of groups and classes in power. ...
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Leonard Peltier will be 63 years old on September 12, 2007. It's an international day for demanding the immediate, unconditional freedom of this Native American artist, writer, and activist--one of the most widely recognized political prisoners in the world....
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It is mind-boggling for us to be here, now, at this late hour, with Leonard Peltier still in chains. Books have been written; documentaries have been produced; congresspeople have joined his freedom campaign -- all for naught. For Leonard Peltier, a former leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), is still not free! That, to anyone with a soul, is a damned shame. ...
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Since 1970, hundreds of other Native Americans from across the country and their non-Native allies have been converging on Plymouth Harbor to let people know that Thanksgiving is a "Day of Mourning" that marks the genocide of thousands of Native Americans, the theft of Native Lands and the assault on Native Cultures. On Thursday, November 23, 2006 despite the cold and rainy weather, hundreds of people gathered and marched on Plymouth Harbor and joined in solidarity as various tribal elders and members spoke about the hypocrisy of the current U.S. government's attack against immigrants and spoke of the importance of Unity among all Indigenous Peoples. Elder Bert Waters read the following statement from Leonard Peltier: ...
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Last fall, when two Black high school students sat under the "white" tree on their campus, white students responded by hanging nooses from the tree. When Black students protested the light punishment for the students who hung the nooses, District Attorney Reed Walters came to the school and told the students he could "take [their] lives away with a stroke of [his] pen." Racial tension continued to mount in Jena , and the District Attorney did nothing in response to several egregious cases of violence and threats against black students....
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The International Action Center, an organization with over 15 centers throughout the United States, denounces the Bush Administration's announcement that the FBI has issued an arrest warrant for ANTONIO CAMACHO NEGRON a Puerto Rican pro-independence leader and former political prisoner....
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There are many developments on the legal and other fronts concerning my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal. We remain in active litigation before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and also have issues pending in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Mumia has been honored by fellow writers through acceptance into a prestigious organization, a Nobel Prize winner recently visited him, an excellent new book was released in France, a leading British newspaper has published a major article on Mumia, and a superb film recently premiered in London and Rome. The following are the highlights....
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We continue to await a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia, concerning my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal. This complex case was orally argued before a three-judge panel on May 17, 2007, following extensive litigation which included voluminous briefing and motions. In my experience of successfully defending a large number of murder cases involving the death penalty, it was a great day....
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