Ruling Against Mumia Shows: No Justice in the Capitalist Courts (tags)
On March 27, the U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia reaffirmed the frame-up conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther Party spokesman and world-renowned radical journalist who has been locked up on Pennsylvania’s death row for more than a quarter century. After previously rejecting Mumia’s request to present evidence of his innocence, as well as a host of issues showing that he was railroaded by a racist court, the Court turned down Mumia’s request for a new trial. It upheld the 2001 ruling by a federal district judge that ordered a new hearing on the sentence, but limited the “choice” to the living hell of life imprisonment without parole ... or execution. Mumia is innocent. He was declared guilty and sentenced to die because of his revolutionary politics and because for years he had been a thorn in the side of the racist rulers of the misnamed “city of brotherly love.” Around the world, millions have come out in defense of Jamal. This latest ruling, like all those that preceded it, shows that the exploited and oppressed must have no faith in the racist injustice system. We call on the workers movement to mobilize its power to free Mumia now!
Update on the AFP Military Rebels (tags)
For the people’s democratic forces, it is just plain killings, disappearances or torture in jail. For military rebels, it’s a different kind of torture. News sources revealed today that the combination of “solitary confinement, intrigues, unsolicited acts of kindness, and even continuous blaring of [heavy] metal music” has taken a toll on the detained Magdalo rebel soldiers, according to the former legal counsel of one of them.