Keep pressure on to free Mumia!

Jan 5, 2012

Although Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams dropped the death sentence on Dec. 7, Mumia Abu-Jamal remains in administrative custody since being transferred from SCI Greene to SCI Mahanoy on Dec. 14. He has been kept isolated from the general population, with limited phone access and visits with family still conducted behind glass walls.

While in administrative custody, Abu-Jamal is technically in “the hole,” with absolutely no human contact. His belongings were limited to eight sheets of paper and eight envelopes and a rubber pen. He gets only one hour in the yard and one visitor a week. At night, the lights in his cell are dimmed only slightly and remain on all day.

According to Pam Africa, with International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia, Abu-Jamal is being told that he can’t be released to general population until he comes to court in Philadelphia where a judge will say his sentence has been changed from death to life in prison. “The prison administration says they can’t move him because they don’t have the signed paperwork, but if this is the case why isn’t he still in SCI Greene?” Africa said.

Africa told this reporter, “When they moved Mumia to Mahanoy, he was surrounded by guards carrying machine guns, shackled, handcuffed and forced to leave all his belongings. Why would he put himself through all this again to come to Philadelphia to have a judge tell him what he already knows? Mumia should have been in general population since 2001, when Judge Yohn overturned the death penalty, but the DA’s office held him on death row for a decade while it filed losing appeals.”

Africa reported that Abu-Jamal is already experiencing solidarity from fellow prisoners. “People at the prison are giving him paper. One young prisoner wrote a poem for him.”

Efforts to win Abu-Jamal’s full release from prison are continuing with an international campaign focusing on violations of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution against cruel and unlawful punishment for wrongfully holding him on death row for 30 years. The campaign will also challenge Abu-Jamal’s continued imprisonment as a violation of international law, signed on to by the U.S., banning the practice of prolonged solitary confinement.

A second campaign will put unrelenting public pressure on the DA’s office based on the merits of Abu-Jamal’s grounds for release, drawing on international human rights standards and international support. This effort includes establishing an Occupy for Justice movement to fight against police brutality and the prison-industrial complex. Supporters will meet in Philadelphia on Jan. 8 to take up the next phase of these struggles. For information, contact freemumia.com or call 267-760-7344.

—Betsey Piette