Simà ³n Trinidad (Ricardo Palmera) was a long-time leader in mass movements for social change in Colombia, and is a top negotiator for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In 2003 Simà ³n was sent to Ecuador to make contact with UN official James Lemoyne, as part of efforts to revive peace talks with the Colombian government, and begin communication on the exchange of prisoners of war. He was captured in Ecuador in 2004 and then extradited to the US on charges of narco-trafficking and kidnapping, and subjected to four separate trials - due to repeated mistrials. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 60 years at the Florence "Supermax" prison in Colorado.
3. Fighters for their people's national oppression and second-class citizenship
Most black political prisoners were targets of the police state Cointelpro program in the 1960s-'70s when the FBI sought to destroy the movement for black freedom. As Glen Ford wrote, "If you attempt to lead Black people on an independent political path, the US state will seek to neutralize you, imprison you, or kill you. If you exercise your right to defend yourself, and your people, from the oppressive arm of the state, they make you into an outlaw, and hunt you down."
The FBI said one of the goals of Cointelpro was to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize... no opportunity must be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques... for maximum effectiveness... and a final goal should be to prevent the long range growth of militant black organizations, especially among youth." This police state operation against black freedom resulted in at least 38 Black Panther Party members killed, including Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges for their armed self-defense actions, several for over 45 years.
Members of the Black Panther Party Still Imprisoned registers the number in prison in 2014, although a number have died since then. The films The FBI's War on Black America: Cointelpro and Cointelpro 101 document this police state dirty work. Those currently incarcerated include:
Leonard Peltier, was an activist in the American Indian Movement, whose goal was to organize native American communities to stand up for their rights. Sentenced to life as a result of a Cointelpro operation, he has been imprisoned for 46 years for killing two FBI agents. Peltier participated in the AIM encampments on the Pine Ridge Reservation where a 1975 shootout instigated by the FBI occurred. Previously some 64 Native Americans, most with ties to AIM, were murdered. Their deaths went uninvestigated by the FBI. Evidence exonerating Peltier in the FBI case was withheld by the FBI. In his appeals, the government admitted it had no evidence he killed the two FBI agents, suppressed evidence proving this, and fabricated other "evidence." The other AIM members tried for the killings were exonerated in trial by reason of self-defense. One prosecutor admitted, "Your honor, we do not know who killed those agents. Further, we don't know what participation, if any, Mr. Peltier had in it." Mother Teresa, Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Amnesty International, among many others, have called for his freedom. The film Incident at Ogala produced by Robert Redford, and the bestselling book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI's War on the American Indian Movement, made the case widely known. See: Whoisleonardpeltier.info and Peltier's Prison Writings.
Mumia Abu Jamal is the most prominent former Black Panther political prisoner. In 1981, Cointelpro style, he was sentenced to death for the murder of a Philadelphia cop. Judge Albert Sabo, who ruled in his case and in his appeals, was heard by a court reporter to state "I'm going to help them fry the n-word." Black jurors were excluded. Witnesses were bribed and threatened to lie on the stand. Documents were hidden in the state prosecutor's office. Mumia was an organizer and campaigner against police abuses in the black community, and was the President of the Association of Black Journalists. During his imprisonment, now commuted to life, he has published several books and commentaries. See films Mumia Abu Jamal: A Case For Reasonable Doubt?, Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary, and freemumia.com, bringmumiahome.com.
Mutulu Shakur, of the Republic of New Afrika movement, participated in presentations to the UN on discrimination experienced by black communities, and by 1970 a target of the FBI's illegal Cointelpro infiltration program. He helped free Assata Shakur from prison in 1979 - and who now has a bounty on her head. In 1988 he was convicted of conspiracy related to a 1981 robbery where a guard and two police officers were killed, and sentenced to 60 years. At no time did the evidence show that Mutulu Shakur killed anyone. He was also convicted for aiding in the prison escape of Assata Shakur, who has asylum in Cuba. At two trials the evidence indicated others were responsible for the deaths (one became a government witness in return for a sentencing deal). The remaining defendants were acquitted for the murder allegations. See Mutulushakur.com and National Faith Coalition Urges Federal Officials To Release Dying Movement Elder Mutulu Shakur.
Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) was chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Black Panther leader. FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover himself named H. Rap Brown - along with Stokely Carmichael, Elijah Muhammad, and Maxwell Stanford - as targets of the Cointelpro program. In an October 1971 standoff with police, he was shot and seized, and spent five years in Attica prison. From 1992 to 1997, the FBI closely surveilled Al-Amin, generating pages of 44,000 documents. In 2000, two sheriffs came to Al-Amin's store with a warrant for failure to appear in court for a case later thrown out. Both were shot and one killed. Al-Amin was sentenced to life without parole, even though Otis Jackson confessed to the shootings. See: whathappened2rap.com
Veronza Bowers was an organizer in the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s. He has been imprisoned 49 years for the murder of a US Park Ranger, on the word of two government informers. There were no eye witnesses and no other independent evidence. See more at prisonersolidarity.com.
Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (died in prison in 2016), leaders of the Black Panthers in Omaha in the 1960s, and targets of Cointelpro. Both men were given life sentences on charges of killing an Omaha policeman. They were convicted on the testimony of a teenager who was beaten by the police and threatened with the electric chair if he did not incriminate Poindexter and Mondo. Amnesty International has defended them as "prisoners of conscience." Poindexter has been imprisoned 52 years. See: FRAMED: J. Edgar Hoover, Cointelpro and the Omaha Two and Ed Poindexter & Mondo We Langa Documentary.
Kamau Sadiki (Freddie Hilton)was a member of the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, and close to Assata Shakur. He has been imprisoned since 2002, for a 1971 murder of a police officer. Back in 1971, two witnesses failed to identify Kamau from a line-up, and there was no physical evidence that implicated Sadiki, so the case was closed. In 2002 Kamau was re-arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for the killing - only after he refused to work with the government to induce Assata Shakur to leave Cuba for another country, where they could seize her.
Rev. Joy Powell organized protests against police brutality and corruption, demanding accountability for its victims, which led her to be targeted by the Rochester Police Department. In 2006, Powell was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to 16 years for burglary and assault. No evidence or eyewitnesses linked her to the crime. Then in 2007, while imprisoned, she was falsely charged with murder, a cold case from 1992, and given another 25-year sentence, to begin upon the completion of her 16-year sentence. See: America is Still Locking People Up for Their Activism, Including Black Women
Alvaro Luna Hernandez (Xinachtli) is a Texas activist for Chicano rights and against police brutality. He was continually targeted by the police, who in 1996 attempted to arrest him on a spurious robbery charge that was later dismissed. The police used violence to arrest him, and Luna Hernandez was sentenced to 50 years in prison on trumped-up charges of threatening a sheriff while resisting arrest. Interview with Alvaro Hernandez. See also prisonersolidarity.com.
Others include Ruchell Cinque Magee, Fred "Muhammad" Burton, Ronald Reed, Kenny Zulu Whitmore. See Prison Activist Resource Center, Jericho Movement, freedomarchives.org, spiritofmandela.org, prisonersolidarity.com.
4. Arab and Muslim targeted in Police State attacks on their Communities
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