February 2007 Action Alert - Free The 8 Panther Vets On Lockdown

[Im The Truth]

ASSATA SPEAKS! FEBRUARY 2007 ACTION ALERT

Title: FREE THE 8 PANTHER VETS ON LOCKDOWN

Time Frame: UNTIL VICTORY IS WON!

Plan of Action: Make phone calls, write letters, attend hearings/meetings/rallies, broadly distribute information, provide financial support and resources towards the struggle for the release of 8 senior citizen Freedom Fighters.

Eight former Black Panthers were arrested January 23, 2007 in California, New York and Florida on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer. Similar charges were thrown out after it was revealed that police used torture to extract confessions when some of these same men were arrested in New Orleans in 1973. Richard Brown, Richard O'Neal, Ray Boudreaux, and Hank Jones were arrested in California. Francisco Torres was arrested in Queens, New York. Harold Taylor was arrested in Florida. Two men charged have been held as political prisoners for over 30 years – Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim are both in New York State prisons. A ninth man -- Ronald Stanley Bridgeforth – is still being sought. The men were charged with the murder of Sgt. John Young and conspiracy that encompasses numerous acts between 1968 and 1973.

Harold Taylor and John Bowman (recently deceased) as well as Ruben Scott (thought to be a government witness) were first charged in 1975. But a judge tossed out the charges, finding that Taylor and his two co-defendants made confessions after police in New Orleans tortured them for several days employing electric shock, cattle prods, beatings, sensory deprivation, plastic bags and hot, wet blankets for asphyxiation.

Purpose of Action: Let the world know of this federal witchhunt, harassment and kidnappings, as proof that this government will terrorize and torture freedom fighters, even in their senior years, to continue their war against those who dared to ever take a stand for the people.

Bail Hearing and Arraignment
Set for Feb. 14, 2007

The first court hearing for the four defendants who live in California-Richard Brown, Hank Jones, Richard O'Neal, and Ray Boudreaux-was held in San Francisco Superior Court on January 29, 2007. They are presently being held on bail of $3 million to $5 million each (!). Their arraignment and a bail reduction hearing was carried over until February 14 at 9:00 a.m.
The Superior Court is at 850 Bryant Street in SF.

Participate

How you can make a difference today:

1. Attend the arraignment and bail reduction hearing on Valentine's Day at San Francisco Superior Court. These men need to get bailed out, which is impossible with the present absurd bail amounts.

2. Write these Brothas and ask them what their specific needs may be (i.e. commissary, books, etc.). We must support them and let their captors know that they have folks on the outside looking out for them.

3. Stay posted on ongoing developments and Action Alerts by subscribing to cdhrsupport's e-mail list (address below) as well as websites in solidarity with these men.

Addresses:

Bro. Herman Bell
# 79C-0262, Sullivan Correctional Facility, Box 116, Riverside Drive,
Fallsburg, New York 12733-0116

Bro. Ray Boudreaux
2301300, 850 Bryant Street, San Francisco CA 94103.

Bro. Richard Brown
2300819, 850 Bryant Street, San Francisco CA 94103.

Bro. Henry (Hank) Jones
2301301, 850 Bryant Street, San Francisco CA 94103.

Bro. Jalil Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom), # 77A4283, Auburn Correctional Facility, 135 State Street, P.O. Box 618, Auburn, NY 13024

Bro. Richard O'Neal
2300818, 850 Bryant Street, San Francisco CA 94103

Bro. Harold Taylor
#07-00944, 5600 Nehi Road, Panama City, FL 32404

Bro. Francisco Torres,
#349071576, 1515 Hazen Street, East Elmhurst, NY 11370.

(taken from http://www.cdhrsupport.org/)

Goals and Outcomes


Goals:

1. To make the release of these men a global issue.
2. To expose this government's campaign of terror against hundreds of U.S. political prisoners, prisoners of war, and exiles.

Outcomes:

1. To achieve full acquittal of all charges on these freedom fighters, and completely clear Bro. John Bowman's name in connection with this.
2. To raise the demand for amnesty for all US freedom fighters by building an even stronger movement!
=================

CHECK THESE WEBSITES REGULARLY!:
http://www.cdhrsupport.org/ (sign up for e-mail list!)
www.thejerichomovement.com
http://fbiwitchhunt.com/BP.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeThe8/
http://www.freedomarchives.org/BPP/torture.html
http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/home/home.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Liberation_Army
http://www.assatashakur.org

[DJ RBG]

San Francisco Attorney Stuart Hanlon who is representing Herman Bell, one of the defendants in the San Francisco Panther 10 case.

by Minister of Information JR

On January 23, 10 Black Panthers were indicted for the alleged killing of a police Sargent inside of a Ingleside police station in San Francisco. Many believe that much of the the main evidence in the case is the tortured confessions of some of the defendants and another individual, who is expected to testify for the state. If the people don't stand up against this, then we are giving a validation to the government to torture people in our name. People stood against the torture that was going on in Iraq, in Guantanimo, Israel, and in Eastern Europe in CIA prisons, its time for us to look at Amerikkka's torture of its own domestic prisoners.

The Panther 10 defendants are also being indicted on conspiracy charges, which means that the government doesn't have to prove that you exactly committed a crime. This is a continuation of the Counter Intelligence program of the FBI in today's form known as a Department of Homeland Security operation. For those who may not know, the Counter Intelligence supposedly was born in the 60's to wage the domestic war of terror that it did, in the interest of the United States government, against the Black Panther Party, the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, the American Indian Movement, as well as the Weatherman Underground, the Crips, the Bloods, and other militant formations, but we know it has existed in Amerikkka at least since runaway Africans teamed up with Natives to fight slave-catchers, its just today we call these two opposing interests the revolutionaries versus the state aka the police/military. People such as Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, Marcus Garvey, Ida B. Wells, Paul Robeson, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, the Black Panther Party, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, and Muhammad Ali are just a few of the many people who were enemies of the state, in which the state used everything that it could to neutralize them. Today the lists continues with people like Mutulu Shakur, Veronza Bowers, political exile Assata Shakur, the Move 9, the Angola 3, the Queens 2, Chip Fitzgerald, Hugo Pinell, Ruchell Magee, and Aaron Patterson just to name a few.

We have to realize that if we don't stand against this type of repression, then soon it will be coming to our front doors. Conspiracy laws can me enacted on people who know a drug dealer or somebody who may have committed any crime. It is not just implemented against freedom fighters. With conspiracy laws, if you refuse to snitch or really don't know anything about the situation but they think that you do, you can be indicted and sentenced as a codefendant.

In this POCC: Block Report Radio interview check out San Francisco Attorney Stuart Hanlon, the lawyer for political prisoner Herman Bell, one of the defendants in this case, as he talks about the ongoing government assualt that is going on to this day against members of the Black Panther Party, as well as this particular indictment of the Panther 10.

MOI JR: Can you tell us what this indictment is about that these Black Panthers have been brought up on?

Hanlon: The indictments have two parts - one of their charges was killing this precinct sargent Young, who was shot in the Ingleside (San Francisco) station in '71, but then their charged with conspiracy to kill policemen, and that conspiracy goes from 1968-1973; and basically it's a broad-based attack on what they call the BLA (Black Liberation Army), but what is really the Black Panther Party in a lot of ways. Its an attack on the organization, on the history, and the politics of it. And they go through 6 or 7 events which they allege these people (were involved in) a conspiracy to kill policemen. So it is going to be a really multi-faceted prosecution.

MOI JR: I know that you also represented former political prisoner Geronimo Ji Jaga aka Geronimo Pratt, how do you relate this case to the Geronimo case from a few decades ago?

Hanlon: Well I think the thing that relates them together is a couple things; you could start with the Cointel Program, which was started by the F.B.I. and J. Edgar Hoover with local law enforcement to get rid of dissent, and especially the Black Panther Party. They targeted Geronimo, and they targeted many of the people who have been charged here, and part of that targeting was to create false cases against them like they did Geronimo. And I think that we're going to see in this case how we've been dealing with evidence that has been fabricated and manipulated. And then it is also to continue the hatred of the Black Panther Party members by law enforcement who were there, back then and now; and they hated Geronimo and they're out to get these people now.

MOI JR: I know that you represent Herman Bell, who is now being held as a political prisoner, and I also know that Jalil Muntaquim is also on this indictment. These two have been locked up for over 30 years already on vague charges, which many of us believe are falsified charges, I should say, why are they attacking someone who is already locked down?

Hanlon: It's hard to tell because they can't get the death penalty. They can't punish these people more than they're being punished - Herman and Jalil. I can't answer that, you know it just seems like continued harassment and oppression of people who were connected to the Panther Party, in the 60's and 70's, in an attempt to make sure that they never see the light of day.

MOI JR: Who are the defendants?

Hanlon: There's Herman Bell, Anthony Bottom aka Jalil Muntaquim, Ray Boudreaux, John Bowman, Ronald Bridgeforth, Richard Brown, Henry Watson Jones, Richard O'Neal, Harold Taylor, and Francisco Torres.

MOI JR: And John Bowman just passed, right?

Hanlon: Right, John Bowman would have been charged but he died of cancer about two weeks ago.

MOI JR: Where do you see this case going? I know that these men are in their 50's and 60's. Do you think that the government has a case?

Hanlon: Well it's going to be going to trial. And whether the government has a case...they haven't had a case in 35 years, its hard to imagine what could be new. So it's going to be a war, and we're going to fight every way that we can to keep these people from either spending more time in prison or going to prison, so it's hard to tell if anything is new. It doesn't seem like there's anything new because the evidence has been there for 35 years, and the science to figure it out, the scientifical evidence has been there for 25 years. So nothing should be really new. And what I want to make clear is that you know that this case started in was torture. Some of these people were tortured in Louisiana, in New Orleans by the police to give up information. There were two cases that were already thrown out because of that torture, and it was tortured statements that led to this prosecution, so I don't think that people in San Francisco are going to convict people where the evidence began with tortured statements from people.

MOI JR: I've been watching the news, and I know that the government claims that they have new scientific technology, and as you just stated, the technology has been there for over 25 years. Can the government just harass people like this with impunity?

Hanlon: No . There's legal issues that we could raise to that. If they cause a delay, the same as with people remembering, as well as with evidence that has passed through time, then the case is not going to go forward. We really have to see what they come up with, and their explanation of what it is.

MOI JR: I know that Ray Bourdreaux, John Bowman, Richard Brown, and I believe two of the other defendants were arrested in 2005, do you know anything about that case?

Hanlon: Yes. They were arrested as grand jury witnesses, because they refused to testify at a grand jury regarding this crime, and they were put in jail for a period of time because they refused to testify.

MOI JR: And that was this same case?

Hanlon: That was investigating this case.

MOI JR: Do you have anything that you would like to say to the readers about this case?

Hanlon: People should pay attention to this case. They should watch what is going on. You know, there is a message that the government is putting out, "if you ever cross us, we'll never give up on punishing you. If you're politics are different from the politics of the ruling regime, we're never going to give up on punishing you." And people should watch this case, because the government calls it "criminal", but we think that it is a political case, and people should watch it and see the ramifications of what happens here.

[Chino]

a homie sent this to me and i thought i should share this with everyone:


Free the Black Panther 8

For immediate release -- Please forward widely

On the occasion of a bail reduction hearing set in San Francisco for
four of the eight former Black Panthers recently indicted on
36-year-old charges based on police torture of some of the defendants
and of the key witness for the prosecution, there will be an
emergency support demonstration and press conference to demand
freedom for the BP8 and all political prisoners. It will take place
on Wednesday, February 14 at 5:00 PM outside the downtown Federal
Building on Los Angeles Street at Temple Street. Although the eight
former Blank Panther Party members are facing trial in San Francisco,
there has been clear federal involvement from the very beginning, in
1971, as part of the COINTELPRO attack on the Black liberation
movement. Therefore, members of the Panther Eight Unity Mission are
taking their public action at the Los Angeles Federal Building.
Although the Eight are charged with conspiracy to kill a police
officer, the real conspiracy was the COINTELPRO secret dirty war on
the Black freedom movement and other liberation struggles, in which
the FBI and local police forces killed, tortured, framed up, shot up
and otherwise waged chemical, psychological and other forms of
warfare on the Panthers. The new indictments are an attempt to lock
up people who withstood and exposed torture and remained steadfast in
their commitment to and love of their people. All people of
conscience are invited to attend the rally and press conference.
Endorsing groups include the Black Riders Liberation Party, the
Jericho Amnesty Coalition, the Danza Mexica Cuauhtemoc, the Puerto
Rican Alliance, Asians for Jericho and Mumia and others that have
come together to support the Black Panther Eight and the Committee to
Defend Human Rights, their defense effort.

Also don't forget the LA premiere showing of "Legacy of Torture: The
War Against the Black Liberation Movement," a powerful new
documentary about the former Panthers base around their recent
incarceration as Grand Jury resisters and their torture back in 1971.
It takes place Saturday, February 14 from 4-7:00 PM at the Southern
California Library for Social Studies & Research, 6120 S. Vermont
between Slauson & Gage. The showing will benefit the eight and their
families.

For more information, call 310-495-0299 or check
www.geocities.com/jerichoamnestycoalitionla

[nattyreb]

Just in case you missed this from the PP section.

CHECK IT: http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_045160746.html