Who Is a Prisoner of War? Mutulu Shakur and the Struggle for Black Liberation

Mutulu Shakur has been incarcerated by the federal government since 1986. A cofounder of the Republic of New Afrika movement, Shakur was a well-known acupuncturist who developed innovative treatment for drug addiction. He was active nationally and internationally in addressing discrimination against Black people in the United States and was a prominent target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO operations. In 1988, in a trial before Judge Charles Haight, Jr., in the Southern District of New York, Shakur was convicted in connection with the 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored car that left a guard and two police officers dead. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison and was eligible for parole in 2016. Since then, despite being a model prisoner, he has been denied parole nine times. In December 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the 69-year-old activist was denied compassionate release by the now 90-year-old Judge Haight, despite the fact that Shakur has advanced and incurable multiple myeloma cancer, has survived a stroke, and suffers from diabetes and hypertension. In his 2020 decision, Judge Haight asserted that it was “impossible” to find that Shakur meets the conditions for compassionate release, primarily because the criminal conduct at issue was “indefensibly undertaken for political reasons.” The court referenced a motion filed in 1988, in which Shakur “contends that under applicable treaties and international law he is a prisoner of war, and thus immune from prosecution for the acts charged in the indictment.” This view, the judge noted, “is echoed today in the website ‘mutulushakur.com’ ... where Shakur refers to himself as a ‘political prisoner.’” On its face, the judge’s reasoning would seem to confirm that, at least at this point, Shakur is, in fact, a political prisoner.