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Raising the stakes to bring in a cop-killer
Feds are offering a $1 million reward to snare Chesimard, now in
Cuba
Monday, May 02, 2005
BY RICK HEPP
Star-Ledger Staff
The U.S. Department of Justice has posted a $1 million bounty for
the capture of New Jersey's most-wanted fugitive: convicted cop-
killer JoAnne Chesimard, the former Black Liberation Army member who
escaped a state prison a quarter of a century ago.
The reward will be announced by Attorney General Peter Harvey and
State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes at the State Police
headquarters in West Trenton today, -- the 32nd anniversary of the
slaying of state Trooper Werner Foerster during a gunfight on the
New Jersey Turnpike. Chesimard was convicted of murdering Foerster
by shooting him twice as he lay wounded.
The $1 million will be the largest reward ever set by the federal
government on a New Jersey fugitive, state police say. Police had
offered $150,000 for Chesimard's capture since 1998.
Authorities know Chesimard is living in Cuba under political asylum.
They hope this new reward will provide more incentive for bounty
hunters.
"She is now 120 pounds of money," State Police Superintendent Rick
Fuentes said. "It is going to exert pressures that weren't in place
nationally and internationally before. And we're going to follow up
to make sure everybody is aware of this both inside and outside of
Cuba."
Harvey and Fuentes also will announce that the Justice Department
has placed Chesimard on a variety of international terrorist watch
lists for the first time.
"We owe it to the family (of the slain trooper)," Fuentes said. "We
owe it to the New Jersey State Police and we owe it to every citizen
in the state of New Jersey to bring her back and we will."
Harvey and Fuentes last Friday were on hand with troopers and
Foerster's family to name a Route 18 bridge in East Brunswick over
the Turnpike the Werner Foerster Overpass.
Chesimard, now 57 and living under the name Assata Shakur, was
convicted in 1977 by a Middlesex County jury of murdering Foerster
during a gunbattle on the New Jersey Turnpike in East Brunswick. A
second trooper, James Harper, was wounded.
The 1973 shootout began minutes after Harper pulled over Chesimard
and two companions for a faulty tail light, according to State
Police files. Foerster, patrolling nearby, responded to provide back
up.
The troopers asked the driver, Clark Squire, to step out of the
vehicle after his license did not match the sedan's registration,
the files show. As Foerster questioned Squire, Harper walked around
the car to speak with Chesimard and her brother-in-law, James
Costan.
That's when shots were fired from within the car and both troopers
returned fire, according to police. A bullet struck Foerster,
knocking him to the ground and leaving him incapacitated.
"Chesimard then took the weapon away from Foerster and shot him in
the neck and head," Fuentes said. "This isn't the result of a toe-to-
toe exchange. This is an execution and there's a clear distinction."
Chesimard's attorneys denied she shot Foerster, saying she was too
seriously wounded to pull a trigger after being struck twice by
shots from Harper's gun.
After the vehicle drove away, Harper, dazed from a gunshot wound to
the left shoulder, staggered to a nearby State Police barracks.
Within minutes, police found the vehicle abandoned on the side of
the road five miles south of the shooting, the files show. Troopers
arrested Chesimard after she walked toward them with her hands in
the air. The body of Costan, who died in the gunfight, was found
near the car.
Squire, whom troopers saw running from the car, was captured the
next day in a wooded area in East Brunswick. Now 67, he remains in a
Pennsylvania prison serving a life sentence. Last August, a state
parole board panel denied his request for release.
In 1979, Chesimard escaped from the Clinton Correctional Institution
for Women in Hunterdon County -- now known as the Edna Mahan
Correctional Facility for Women -- when three gunmen posing as
visitors took two guards hostage and drove her out of the facility's
maximum-security unit in a van.
Three months ago, State Police sent Lt. Col. Juan Mattos to an
international policing conference in the Dominican Republic to ask
Caribbean, Central American and South American authorities for help
in arresting Chesimard.
"We want to make sure she does not have a way to escape from Cuba
and we want to apply pressure to her while she is in Cuba," Harvey
said.
About a year ago, Harvey and Fuentes approached Joseph Billy, then
Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Newark office and now deputy
assistant director for counter-intelligence in Washington, D.C.
Billy helped them apply to the FBI to increase the reward. Harvey
and Fuentes presented their arguments directly to FBI Director
Robert Mueller, and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed
the order last Thursday.
Rick Hepp covers criminal justice. He can be reached at
[email protected] or (609) 989-0398.
U.S., keep your hands off Assata!
Interview with Assata Shakur, part 1
Assata Shakur
Pan-African News Wire - What happens to old Black Panthers? Some
wind up dead, like Huey P. Newton. Some join the Moonies and the
Republican Party, like Eldridge Cleaver. Some, like Mumia Abu Jamal,
languish in prison.
But a few, like Assata Shakur, have taken the path of the
"maroon,"
the runaway slave of old who slipped off the plantation to the free
jungle communities known as "palenques." Two decades ago,
Shakur was
described as "the soul of the Black Liberation Army," an
underground, paramilitary group that emerged from the rubble of East
Coast chapters of the Black Panther Party. Among her closest
political comrades was Afeni Shakur, Tupac Shakur's mother.
Forced underground in 1971 by charges that were later proved false,
Assata was accused of being the "bandit queen" of the BLA,
the "mother hen who kept them together, kept them moving, kept
them
shooting." The BLA's alleged actions included assassinating
almost
10 police officers, kidnapping drug dealers - one of whom turned out
to be an FBI agent - and robbing banks from coast to coast.
Throughout 1971 and 1972, "Assata sightings" and wild
speculation
about her deeds were a headline mainstay for New York tabloids.
Then, on May 2, 1973, Shakur and two friends were pulled over by
state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike. During the stop, shooting
erupted. A trooper and one alleged BLA member were killed, another
trooper was slightly hurt and Assata - or Miss Joanne Chesimard, as
authorities preferred to call her - was severely wounded by a blast
of police gunfire.
Left to die in a paddy wagon, she survived only to be charged for
the trooper's death and sentenced to life in prison. During the
next
six years - much of it spent in solitary confinement - Shakur beat a
half dozen other indictments.
In 1979, after giving birth in prison, only to have her daughter
taken away in less than a week, Assata Shakur managed one of the
most impressive jailbreaks of the era. After almost a year in a West
Virginia federal prison for women, surrounded by white supremacists
from the Aryan Sisterhood prison gang, Shakur was transferred to the
maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional Center in New
Jersey.
There she was one of only eight maximum security prisoners held in a
small, well-fenced cellblock of their own. The rest of Clinton -
including its visiting area - was medium security and not fenced in.
According to news reports at the time, Shakur's Nov. 2 escape
proceeded as follows: Three men - two black, one white - using bogus
driver's licenses and Social Security cards, requested visits
with
Assata four weeks in advance, as was prison policy. But prison
officials never did the requisite background checks.
On the day of the escape, the team of three met in the waiting room
at the prison entrance, where they were processed through
registration and shuttled in a van to the visiting room in South
Hall. One member of the team went ahead of the rest. Although there
was a sign stating that all visitors would be searched with a hand
held metal detector, he made it through registration without even a
pat-down.
Meanwhile, the other two men were processed without a search. As
these two were being let through the chain-link fences and locked
metal doors at the visiting center, one of them drew a gun and took
the guard hostage. Simultaneously, the man visiting Shakur rushed
the control booth, put two pistols to the glass wall, and ordered
the officer to open the room's metal door. She obliged.
From there, Shakur and "the raiders," as some press reports
dubbed
them, took a third guard hostage and made it to the parked van.
Because only the maximum security section of the prison was fully
fenced in, the escape team was able to speed across a grassy meadow
to the parking lot of the Hunterdon State School, where they met two
more female accomplices and split up into a "two-tone blue
sedan"
and a Ford Maverick.
All the guards were released unharmed, and the FBI immediately
launched a massive hunt. But Shakur disappeared without a trace. For
the next five years, authorities hunted in vain. Shakur had
vanished. Numerous other alleged BLA cadre were busted during those
years, including Tupac's step-father, Mutula Shakur.
In 1984 word came from 90 miles off the coast of Florida. The
FBI's
most wanted female fugitive was living in Cuba, working on a
master's degree in political science, writing her autobiography
and
raising her daughter.
Cut to 2001. It's a stunningly hot summer afternoon in Havana,
Cuba,
the ultimate palenque, and I am having strong, black coffee with
Assata Shakur, who just turned 54 but looks more like 36. She keeps
a low profile; security is still a big concern. She's finishing
her
second book. Given how much the feds want this woman locked up, I
feel strange being in her house, as if my presence is a breach of
security.
Q: How did you arrive in Cuba?
A: Well, I couldn't, you know, just write a letter and say,
"Dear
Fidel, I'd like to come to your country." So I had to hoof it
- come
and wait for the Cubans to respond. Luckily, they had some idea who
I was. They'd seen some of the briefs and UN petitions from when
I
was a political prisoner. So they were somewhat familiar with my
case, and they gave me the status of being a political refugee. That
means I am here in exile as a political person.
Q: How did you feel when you got here?
A: I was really overwhelmed. Even though I considered myself a
socialist, I had these insane, silly notions about Cuba. I mean, I
grew up in the 1950s when little kids were hiding under their desks,
because "the communists were coming." So even though I was
very
supportive of the revolution, I expected everyone to go around in
green fatigues looking like Fidel, speaking in a very stereotypical
way: "The revolution must continue, Companero. Let us, triumph,
Comrade."
When I got here people were just people, doing what they had where I
came from. It's a country with a strong sense of community.
Unlike
the U.S., folks aren't as isolated. People are really into other
people. Also, I didn't know there were all these black people
here
and that there was this whole Afro-Cuban culture. My image of Cuba
was Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. I hadn't heard of Antonio Maceo
(a
hero of the Cuban war of independence) and other Africans who had
played a role in Cuban history.
The lack of brand names and consumerism also really hit me. You go
into a store and there would be a bag of "rice." It
undermined what
I had taken for granted in the absurd zone where people are
like, "Hey, I only eat Uncle So and So's brand of rice."
Q: So, how were you greeted by the Cuban state?
A: They've treated me very well. It was different from what I
expected. I thought they might be pushy. But they were more
interested in what I wanted to do, in my projects. I told them that
the most important things were to unite with my daughter and to
write a book. They said, "What do you need to do that?"
They were also interested in my vision of the struggle of African
people in the United States. I was so impressed by that - because I
grew up, so to speak, in the movement, dealing with white leftists
who were very bossy and wanted to tell us what to do and thought
they knew everything. The Cuban attitude was one of solidarity with
respect. It was a profound lesson in cooperation.
Q: Did they introduce you to people or guide you around for a while?
A: They gave me a dictionary, an apartment, took me to some
historical places, and then I was pretty much on my own. My daughter
came down, after prolonged harassment and being denied a passport,
and she became my number one priority. We discovered Cuban schools
together, we did the sixth grade together, explored parks and the
beach.
Q: She was taken from you at birth, right?
A: Yeah. It's not like Cuba where you get to breastfeed in prison
and where they work closely with the family. Some mothers in the
U.S. never get to see their newborns. I was with my daughter for a
week before they sent me back to the prison. That was one of the
most difficult periods of my life, that separation. It's only
been
recently that I've been able to talk about it. I had to just
block
it out. Otherwise I think I might have gone insane. In 1979, when I
escaped, she was only five years old.
i believe in living
by Assata Shakur
i believe in living.
i believe in the spectrum
of Beta days and Gamma people.
i believe in sunshine.
In windmills and waterfalls,
tricycles and rocking chairs;
And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts.
And sprouts grow into trees.
i believe in the magic of the hands.
And in the wisdom of the eyes.
i believe in rain and tears.
And in the blood of infinity.
i believe in life.
And i have seen the death parade
march through the torso of the earth,
sculpting mud bodies in its path
i have seen the destruction of the daylight
and seen bloodthirsty maggots
prayed to and saluted
i have seen the kind become the blind
and the blind become the bind
in one easy lesson.
i have walked on cut grass.
i have eaten crow and blunder bread
and breathed the stench of indifference
i have been locked by the lawless.
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if i know anything at all,
it's that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.
i believe in living
i believe in birth.
i believe in the sweat of love
and in the fire of truth.
And i believe that a lost ship,
steered by tired, seasick sailors,
can still be guided home to port.
U.S., keep your hands off Assata!
Interview with Assata Shakur, part 2
Assata Shakur
Assata Shakur was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black
Liberation Army whose revolutionary activities led to her breaking
out of prison and being granted political asylum in Cuba. To learn
more about her, you can check out her autiobiography,
"Assata." You
can also check out "Inadmissible Evidence," the book by her
aunt
Evelyn Williams, who was her attorney, and you can watch the film by
Gloria Rolando called "Eyes on the Rainbow," which is a
documentary
about Assata talking about Assata.
She is featured in Afrikan Anti Terrorism Month because she is a
warrior who stood up for Black people, and it almost cost her life
on more than one occasion. This revolutionary elder has been shot,
tortured, imprisoned and split up from her family because of her
political beliefs and affiliations and has been on the run for more
than 20 years where Amerikkka hasn't been able to touch her. This
is
the interview with a Sista-General who smashed in a revolutionary
manner when the going got tough. Check her out
Q: You came to Cuba how soon after (escaping from prison)?
A: Five years later, in 1984.
Q: I know it's probably out of bounds, but where were you during
the
intervening years?
A: I was underground. But I don't talk about that period. To do
so
would put a lot of people who helped me in jeopardy.
Q: Right, I hear you. You've talked about adjusting to Cuba, but
could you talk a bit about adjusting to exile.
A: Well, for me exile means separation from people I love. I
didn't,
and don't, miss the U.S., per se. But black culture, black life
in
the U.S., that African American flavor, I definitely miss. The
language, the movements, the style - I get nostalgic about that.
Adjusting to exile is coming to grips with the fact that you may
never go back to where you come from. The way I dealt with that,
psychologically, was thinking about slavery. You know, a slave had
to come to grips with the fact that "I may never see Africa
again."
Then a maroon, a runaway slave, has to - even in the act of freedom -
adjust to the fact that being free or struggling for freedom
means, "I'll be separated from people I love."
So I drew on that and people like Harriet Tubman and all those
people who got away from slavery. Because, that's what prison
looked
like. It looked like slavery. It felt like slavery. It was black
people and people of color in chains. And the way I got there was
slavery. If you stand up and say, "I don't go for the status
quo."
Then "we got something for you. It's a whip, a chain, a
cell."
Even in being free, it was like, "I am free, but now what?"
There
was a lot to get used to. Living in a society committed to social
justice, a third world country with a lot of problems. It took a
while to understand all that Cubans are up against and fully
appreciate all they are trying to do.
Q: Did the African-ness of Cuba help? Did that provide solace?
A: The first thing that was comforting was the politics. It was such
a relief. You know, in the States you feel overwhelmed by the
negative messages that you get and you just feel weird, like
you're
the only one seeing all this pain and inequality. People are
saying, "Forget about that. Just try to get rich. Get your own.
Buy.
Spend. Consume."
So living here was an affirmation of myself. It was like, "Okay,
there are lots of people who get outraged at injustice." The
African
culture I discovered later. At first I was learning the politics,
about socialism - what it feels like to live in a country where
everything is owned by the people, where health care and medicine
are free.
Then I started to learn about the Afro-Cuban religions - the
Santaria, Palo Monte, the Abakua. I wanted to understand the
ceremonies and the philosophy. I really came to grips with how much
we - Black people in the U.S. - were robbed of, whether it's the
tambours, the drums or the dances.
Here, they still know rituals preserved from slavery times. It was
like finding another piece of myself. I had to find an African name.
I'm still looking for pieces of that Africa I was torn from.
I've
found it here in all aspects of the culture. There is a tendency to
reduce the African-ness of Cuba to the Santaria. But it's in the
literature, the language, the politics.
Q: When the USSR collapsed, did you worry about about a counter-revolution
in Cuba and, by extension, your own safety?
A: Of course. I would have to have been nuts not to worry. People
would come down here from the States and say, "How long do you
think
the revolution has - two months, three months? Do you think the
revolution will survive? You better get out of here." It was
rough.
Cubans were complaining every day, which is totally sane. I mean,
who wouldn't? The food situation was really bad, much worse than
now - no transportation, eight-hour blackouts. We would sit in the
dark and wonder, "How much can people take?" I've been to
prison and
lived in the States, so I can take damn near anything.
I felt I could survive whatever - anything except U.S. imperialism
coming in and taking control. That's the one thing I couldn't
survive. Luckily, a lot of Cubans felt the same way. It took a lot
for people to pull through, waiting hours for the bus before work.
It wasn't easy.
But this isn't a superficial, imposed revolution. This is one of
those gut revolutions. One of those blood, sweat and tears
revolutions. This is one of those revolutions where people are
like, "We ain't going back on the plantation, period. We
don't care
if you're Uncle Sam, we don't care about your guided
missiles, about
your filthy, dirty CIA maneuvers. We're this island of 11 million
people, and we're gonna live the way we want and if you don't
like
it, go take a ride." And we could get stronger with the language.
Of
course, not everyone feels like that, but enough do.
Q: What about race and racism in Cuba?
A: That's a big question. The revolution has only been around 30-
something years. It would be fantasy to believe that the Cubans
could have completely gotten rid of racism in that short a time.
Socialism is not a magic wand: wave it and everything changes.
Q: Can you be more specific about the successes and failures along
these lines?
A: I can't think of any area of the country that is segregated.
Another example, the Third Congress of the Cuban Communist Party was
focused on making party leadership reflect the actual number of
people of color and women in the country. Unfortunately, by the time
the Fourth Congress rolled around, the whole focus had to be on the
survival of the revolution.
When the Soviet Union and the socialist camp collapsed, Cuba lost
something like 85 percent of its income. It's a process, but I
honestly think that there's room for a lot of changes throughout
the
culture.
Some people still talk about "good hair" and "bad
hair." Some people
think light skin is good, that if you marry a light person you're
advancing the race. There are a lot of contradictions in people's
consciousness. There still needs to be de-Eurocentrizing of the
schools, though Cuba is further along with that than most places in
the world.
In fairness, I think that race relations in Cuba are 20 times better
than they are in the States and I believe the revolution is
committed to eliminating racism completely. I also feel that the
special period has changed conditions in Cuba. It's brought in
lots
of white tourists, many of whom are racists and expect to be waited
on subserviently.
Another thing is the joint venture corporations which bring their
racist ideas and racist corporate practices - for example, not
hiring enough blacks. All of that means the revolution has to be
more vigilant than ever in identifying and dealing with racism.
Q: A charge one hears, even on the left, is that institutional
racism still exists in Cuba. Is that true? Does one find racist
patterns in allocation of housing, work or the functions of criminal
justice?
A: No. I don't think institutional racism, as such, exists in
Cuba.
But at the same time, people have their personal prejudices.
Obviously these people, with these personal prejudices, must work
somewhere and must have some influence on the institutions they work
in. But I think it's superficial to say racism is
institutionalized
in Cuba.
I believe that there needs to be a constant campaign to educate
people, sensitize people and analyze racism. The fight against
racism always has two levels: the level of politics and policy, but
also the level of individual consciousness. One of the things that
influences ideas about race in Cuba is that the revolution happened
in 1959, when the world had a very limited understanding of what
racism was.
During the 1960s, the world saw the black power movement, which I,
for one, very much benefited from. You know "black is
beautiful,"
exploring African art, literature and culture. That process
didn't
really happen in Cuba.
Over the years, the revolution accomplished so much that most people
thought that meant the end of racism. For example, I'd say that
more
than 90 percent of black people with college degrees were able to do
so because of the revolution. They were in a different historical
place. The emphasis, for very good reasons, was on black-white unity
and the survival of the revolution. So it's only now that people
in
the universities are looking into the politics of identity.
Q: What do you think of the various situations of your former
comrades? For example, the recent releases of Geronimo Pratt, Johnny
Spain and Dhoruba Bin Wahad; the continued work of Angela Davis and
Bobby Seale; and, on a downside, the political trajectory of
Eldridge Cleaver and the death of Huey Newton?
A: There have been some victories. And those victories have come
about from a lot of hard work. But it took a long time. It took
Geronimo 27 years and Dhoruba 19 years to prove that they were
innocent and victimized by COINTELPRO. The government has admitted
that it operated COINTELPRO, but it hasn't admitted to
victimizing
anyone. How can that be?
I think that people in the States should be struggling for the
immediate freedom of Mumia Abu Jamal and amnesty for all political
prisoners. I think that the reason these tasks are largely neglected
reflects not only the weakness of the left, but its racism.
On the positive side, I think a lot of people are growing and
healing. Many of us are for the first time analyzing the way we were
wounded - not just as Africans, but as people in the movement who
were, and still are, subjected to terror and surveillance. We're
finally able to come together and acknowledge that the repression
was real and say, "We need to heal."
I have hope for a lot of those people who were burnt out or addicted
to drugs or alcohol, the casualties of our struggle. Given all that
we were and are up against, I think we did pretty well.
This interview came to the Bay View from the Pan-African News Wire
via Marpessa Kupendua.