Granma International (Cuba)

MUMIA: 20 years on death row Journalist and militant
of the black cause, condemned to death after a dirty trial,
has begun his 20 year on death row, in a prison in Pennsylvania,
and has offered new proof his innocence.
In the United States there are 3,700 prisoners condemned like him,
the majority of African descent or members of minority racial groups,
waiting to be legally executed.

The owners of the media understand all too well
how vulnerable the United States is
on the issue of racism

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD (Special for Granma International)

This July, Mumia Abu-Jamal, prizewinning U.S. journalist and leading militant for the black cause, condemned to death after a dirty trial, will begin his 20^th year of imprisonment in the horrendous inhumanity that is death row, in a Pennsylvanian prison, another example of “respect for human rights” in a country that is currently holding five young Cuban patriots after another trial based on “advice” from the FBI.

Refusing to lose hope of winning out over the traps of the U.S. “justice” system, Mumia once again challenges those who are trying to execute him by presenting new proof of his innocence with a new team of lawyers.

Among these documents is a statement signed by Arnold Beverly, who confirms having been ordered to kill agent Faulkner by police and local Mafia, who wanted to prevent him from revealing his activities. Beverly admitted to having killed him with a pistol provided by the police

The dossier also contains four new statements: one by Mumia explaining the events again; a second by his brother, who was involved in the fatal accident; a third by a journalist for the Philadelphia Tribune revealing the total absence of forensic agents at the scene of the crime, two hours after the tragedy; and a fourth from an FBI informer in charge of a secret investigation into police corruption in Philadelphia.

Strangely, the federal prosecutor’s office has so far refused to formally interrogate Beverly, despite requests from Mumia’s lawyers.

Caught in a police raid on the night of December 8, 1981, in Philadelphia, after an armed confrontation that ended in death of white police officer Daniel Faulkner, Mumia was tried and sentenced on May 25, 1983, by Judge Albert F. Sabo. The magistrate, an ex-police officer and member of the extreme right-wing police group Fraternal Order of Police, holds the sinister record for having sentenced more people to death than any other U.S. judge: his record at the time was 31, only two of whom were white.

A year ago, the most famous U.S. political prisoner filed a new appeal with federal judge Yohn who had been appointed by George Bush Sr. in 1991. Yohn has taken so long to make a decision that a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer recently asked if this had anything to do with the magistrate’s name, and whether Yohn should really be called Yawn.

In the United States, the country that champions human rights when it’s convenient, there are 3,700 prisoners, like Mumia Abu-Jamal, condemned to death. The vast majority of those waiting for their “legal” execution are of African descent or belong to some racial minority.

According to the Center for Death Penalty Information in Washington, in the year 2000 alone 85 people were executed, after an average waiting period of 9.5 years. In Pennsylvania, where 241 are on death row, according to the state authorities the average wait is 8.7 years.

In a valiant call entitled “The face of U.S. Barbarity,” published in the French daily Libération, Danielle Mitterrand, widow of the former French president, after visiting Mumia in prison, asked the question: “Who are they trying to kill?” And replied: “A committed journalist who during the ’70s became the voice of the voiceless,” who denounced “a class- and race-orientated justice system, a reflection on that vast country that exports an image of modern and commendable democracy.”

Mitterrand concluded “we call on the millions of U.S.who do not recognize themselves in that image of barbarity to wake up!

Scores of other international personalities have supported Mumia, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, writers Günter Grass and Norman Mailer, academic Noam Chomsky, supermodel Naomi Campbell and actor Paul Newman.

Despite the importance of the Mumia case, the establishment U.S. press has remained completely silent on the new developments in the Black Panther’s case.

Monica Moorehead, of the prisoner’s support committee, (www.mumia2000.org), explains, “None of these significant legal developments has received national media attention. This confirms the view that the big-business media want to keep Abu-Jamal’s case out of the headlines because it is in the ruling class’s interests to portray Mumia as a “cop killer”

“In fact, Abu-Jamal is a powerful and effective spokesperson and activist against all forms of racist and class oppression endemic to the capitalist system, here and abroad. The media owners understand all too well how vulnerable the United States is on the issue of racism.”

In the same way, for wanting to protect their country from Miami mafia conspiracies, five Cuban patriots are also imprisoned, in the top-security wing of a Florida prison, due to the same tricks played by the extreme right, always associated with the mainstream press and the FBI in its role of political gendarme.

And all of this is happening in a country that so often sermonizes on “human rights outside its own frontiers.