COINTELPRO Continues: Dr. Mutulu Shakur

Abstract

Since 1968, or possibly even earlier, Dr. Mutulu Shakur has been a target of the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) and subsequent U.S. government programs attacking the Black Liberation Movement. Because of the similarities of these programs, in this article, the term COINTELPRO is used generally to reflect organized and intentional repression or counterinsurgency. Dr. Shakur is a Black revolutionary, and has been targeted as an enemy of the U.S. State for most of his adult life. Throughout his 36 years in prison, he has lived his life as a peacemaker, mentoring and teaching the people in prison with him, without a single rule infraction involving violence. But even while he continues to live in captivity, a program of unrelenting repression defines every aspect of his life, repression implemented by the combined weight of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), FBI, US Parole Commission (USPC), US Attorneys, and sitting Judges. Any assessment of his special treatment and the conditions under which he lives can only conclude that COINTELPRO has been implemented against him continuously for the last 36 years. Dr. Shakur has been denied parole nine times since he became eligible in 1996. Unlike most other people in prison, he was denied his mandatory release date after serving 30 years. For his entire incarceration, he has been on a continuing twohour hold, meaning he must be physically viewed by a prison staffer every two hours. He has been transferred to maximum security prisons four times on nondisciplinary transfers—prison staff refer to this as "diesel therapy." Dr. Shakur has spent years in solitary confinement, and been “disappeared” by the Bureau of Prisons twice—his whereabouts inside the prison system were unknown. Despite his current and ongoing suffering from advanced bone cancer, which was neglected for years by the prison medical system, he has been denied compassionate release three times. The overall intention is clear—death by incarceration.