Mumia Abu-Jamal seeks help from the United Nations to either release him or bring pressure to force a new trial
By Frederick H. Lowe Mumia Abu-Jamal’s lawyers are seeking a retrial, commutation, or release for Abu-Jamal, who has been in prison since 1981 for allegedly killing a Philadelphia cop. Abu-Jamal, a former reporter with whom I once worked, has exhausted his appeals in the United States courts and is taking his case to the United Nations. The UN cannot order his release, but condemnation of the original trial could prompt calls for a retrial. The lawsuit was filed July 28 with the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention for Abu-Jamal. It was submitted by the Abolitionist Law Center, American Civil Liberties Union, and Center for Constitutional Rights. California Coalition for Women Prisoners and the Aging People in Prison Campaign. Abu-Jamal is 72. The filing represents a dramatic move in one of America’s most divisive criminal cases.Abu-Jamal’s legal team, led by Bret Grote, legal director for the Abolitionist Law Center based in Pittsburgh, alleged violations dating back to his 1982 trial, which Abu-Jamal’s lawyers charged prosecutors withheld key evidence that would have cleared their client. The judge was also a problem. The petition to the U.N. body points out that Judge Albert Sabo, the original trial judge, who was allowed to hear Abu-Jamal’s initial appeals, was overheard saying, “I’m going to help them fry the n****r.” Abu-Jamal’s most recent appeal was denied in 2023 by Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Lucretia Clemons, who refused to consider new evidence only disclosed to Abu-Jamal’s defense team in 2018. He was held in solitary confinement from 1983 to 2011, a violation of the Nelson Mandela Rules.The Nelson Mandela Rules are the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 17, 2015, after a five‑year revision process. It is named in honor of former South African President Nelson Mandela, symbolizing dignity, justice, and rehabilitation in the penal system. Abu-Jamal has spent 44 years in prison, is at risk of permanent blindness due to deteriorating eyesight caused by complications from a 2019 cataract surgery and diabetic retinopathy, and was convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner during a December 1981 traffic stop involving Abu-Jamal’s brother. Faulkner was fatally shot, and Abu-Jamal was discovered nearby with a bullet wound to his chest. I was living in Philadelphia, working as a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News, and many of the reporters were in disbelief that Mumia had been arrested. Some reporters went on the radio and television saying they didn’t believe the story the police were telling. I worked with him on one story. He was soft-spoken and friendly. I liked him instantly. Abu-Jamal’s death sentence was overturned by a federal court in 2001. He was described as “perhaps the world’s best-known death-row inmate” by The New York Times. During his imprisonment, Abu-Jamal published books and commentaries on social and political issues; his first book was Live from Death Row (1995). Prosecutors presented eyewitnesses and an alleged hospital confession; Abu-Jamal has maintained his innocence throughout his time in prison. But police and prosecutors had their collective minds made up about his guilt. This is not unusual when it comes to Black men who often are jailed for no reason by police. For example, Man who spent 27 years in prison sues police who framed him for a murder (BlackmansStreet, August 2, 2026) Mumia’s attorneys say witnesses were pressured or offered incentives, evidence was withheld, and prosecutors used his Black Panther history and political statements against him during the sentencing phase. The media ate it up. The judge, police, and prosecutors accused him of being a member of the Black Panther Party. This was a crime in the eyes of J. Edgar Hoover, the Chicago police, police everywhere, and people who knew very little about the organization, its mission, and its contributions. It got under Hoover’s ire that the party fed hungry school children breakfast. Hoover declared in 1969 that the party “represents the greatest threat among the black extremist groups to the internal security of the United States.” Hoover viewed the Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for School Children Program as one of the most troubling aspects of the organization’s activities. Beginning in January 1969 at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California, the program fed tens of thousands of hungry children every morning before school, offering meals such as eggs, meat, cereal, and fresh fruit. The result of thousands of American children becoming accustomed to free breakfast, former party member Norma Amour told Eater, a Chicago restaurant magazine, was what prompted the government to expand its own school food programs. But not everyone was happy. On April 29, 2019, a researcher shared the following tweet showing a screenshot of texts reporting that in 1969, Chicago police were considered one of the nation’s worst police departments, with Jon Burge, a violent rogue cop on the payroll. Officers under Burge’s command allegedly urinated on food and supplies gathered by the Black Panthers for its free breakfast program. Though the USDA had piloted free breakfast programs since the mid-1960s, the program only took off in the early 1970s—right around the time the Black Panthers’ programs were dismantled. Hoover also used the FBI to run COINTELPRO, a syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program, a series of covert projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 to surveil, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt American political parties and organizations that the FBI perceived as subversive. In addition, it was employed against Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X. On the morning of December 4, 1969, Chicago police officers under the orders of then-Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan stormed the apartment at 2337 W. Monroe Street in Chicago’s Near West Side, where Fred Hampton and Mark Clark — leaders of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party — were sleeping. The police, heavily armed with pistols, a shotgun, and a submachine gun, broke into the building at 4:30 a.m. and opened fire, firing over 90 rounds into the apartment. The occupants, including Hampton, his pregnant fiancée Deborah Johnson, and several other Panthers, were unarmed and asleep. Hampton, 21, was shot at close range in his bed with two bullets to the head. Mark Clark, 22, was shot in the chest while on guard. They were tipped off by William O’Neal, who was head of security at Hampton and an FBI informant. Police and Hanrahan charged the Panthers with engaging in a fierce gun battle, but the gun battle turned out to be nail holes in the walls. Investigations and media reports quickly uncovered that the “bullet holes” were actually nail heads — the protruding heads of nails used to secure the apartment’s doors and walls. This meant the police’s claim that they were fired upon was a lie. |