Assata Shakur, a Black liberation activist who was given political asylum in Cuba after her 1979 escape from a U.S. prison where she had been serving a life sentence for killing a police officer, has died, her daughter and the Cuban government said.
Shakur, who was born Joanne Deborah Chesimard, died Thursday in the capital city of Havana due to “health conditions and advanced age,” Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Shakur’s daughter, Kakuya Shakur, also confirmed her mother’s death in a Facebook post.
Shakur’s case had long been a thorny issue in the fraught relations between the U.S. and Cuba. American authorities, including President Donald Trump during his first term, had demanded her return from the communist nation for decades.
In her telling, and in the minds of her supporters, she was pursued for crimes she didn’t commit or that were justified. The FBI put Shakur on its list of “ most wanted terrorists.”
Shakur and two others were involved in a gunfight with New Jersey State Police troopers following a highway traffic stop on May 2, 1973.
Trooper Werner Foerster was killed and another officer was wounded, while one of Shakur’s companions was also killed.
Shakur, who was at the time wanted on several felonies, including bank robbery, fled but was eventually apprehended.
Shakur was found guilty in 1977 of murder, armed robbery and other crimes and was sentenced to life in prison, only to escape in November 1979.
Members of the Black Liberation Army, posing as visitors, stormed the Clinton Correctional Facility for women, took two guards hostage and commandeered a prison van to break Shakur out.
She disappeared before eventually emerging in 1984 in Cuba, where Fidel Castro granted her asylum, according to the FBI.
Offering Shakur asylum was one of the most famous examples of Cuba aligning itself with what it describes as revolutionary forces struggling against the oppressive capitalist empire to the north. Much like Cuba supported anti-colonial and left-wing forces in Africa, Central and South America, the Cuban government saw the armed Black liberation movement in the U.S. as part of a global revolutionary struggle.
