United States authorities demand Cuba extradites political refugee Assata Shakur

This video from the USA says about itself:

Assata Shakur in Her Own Words: Rare Recording of Activist Named to FBI Most Wanted Terrorist List

3 May 2013

The FBI has added the former Black Panther Assata Shakur to its Most Wanted Terrorist List 40 years after the killing for which she was convicted. Born Joanne Chesimard, Shakur was found guilty of shooting dead a New Jersey state trooper during a gunfight in 1973. Shakur has long proclaimed her innocence and accused federal authorities of political persecution.

She escaped from prison in 1979 and received political asylum in Cuba. On Thursday, she became the first woman added to the FBI’s terrorist list and the reward for her capture was doubled to $2 million. We begin our coverage by airing Shakur’s reading of an open letter she wrote to Pope John Paul II during his trip to Cuba in 1998 after the FBI asked him to urge her extradition. “As a result of being targeted by [the FBI program] COINTELPRO, I was faced with the threat of prison, underground, exile or death,” Shakur said at the time. “I am not the first, nor the last, person to be victimized by the New Jersey system of ‘justice.’ The New Jersey State Police are infamous for their racism and brutality.”

Transcript of this video is here.

This video from the USA says about itself:

Angela Davis and Assata Shakur’s Lawyer Denounce FBI’s Adding of Exiled Activist to Terrorist List

3 May 2013

One day after the exiled former Black Panther Assata Shakur became the first woman named to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist List, we’re joined by another legendary African-American activist, Angela Davis, as well as Shakur’s longtime attorney, Lennox Hinds.

Davis, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the subject of the recent film, “Free Angela & All Political Prisoners.” She argues that the FBI’s latest move, much like its initial targeting of Shakur and other Black Panthers four decades ago, is politically motivated. “It seems to me that this act incorporates or reflects the very logic of terrorism,” Davis says. “I can’t help but think that it’s designed to frighten people who are involved in struggles today. Forty years ago seems like it was a long time ago. In the beginning of the 21st century, we’re still fighting around the very same issues — police violence, health care, education, people in prison.”

A professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, Hinds has represented Shakur since 1973. “This is a political act pushed by the state of New Jersey, by some members of Congress from Miami, and with the intent of putting pressure on the Cuban government and to inflame public opinion,” Hinds says. “There is no way to appeal someone being put on the terrorist list.”

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Call for refugee’s extraditon threatens flights to Havana

Saturday 24th October 2015

AUTHORITIES in New Jersey are opposing airline flights to Cuba until a high-profile US refugee has been extradited.

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey chairman John Degnan urged United Airlines on Thursday to postpone the launch of services from Newark airport to Cuba.

Mr Degnan’s intervention came the day after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican presidential hopeful, wrote to him asking for support.

The two want former Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur extradited from Cuba to the US.

Ms Shakur, who describes herself as “20th-century escaped slave,” was jailed in 1977 for the murder of New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster in a 1973 shoot-out.

This was despite defence testimony that she had been shot twice with her arms raised and had her right arm paralysed.

Ms Shakur escaped from prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba in 1984, where she was granted political asylum.