arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

PHILDELPHIA (ANP) - Een federale rechter in de Verenigde Staten heeft dinsdag de terdoodveroordeling van de zwarte activist Mumia Abu-Jamal nietig verklaard. Rechter William Yohn oordeelde dat er binnen zes maanden een nieuwe zitting over de zaak-Abu-Jamal moet worden gehouden.
Volgens de federale rechter zij er fouten gemaakt bij het gerechtelijk onderzoek dat leidde tot de veroordeling van Abu-Jamal.
De 47-jarige activist en journalist Abu Jamal is een voormalig lid van de militante beweging Black Panter. Hij is veroordeeld wegens de moord op een blanke politieman twintig jaar geleden en zit al jaren in een politiecel.
Popsteren als Rage Against the Machine, Sting en de Beastie Boys, alsmede auteurs als Salman Rushdie en Günter Grass hebben zich beijverd voor de vrijlating van Abu-Jamal. Ze zijn van mening dat hij geen eerlijk proces heeft gekregen. Abu-Jamal heeft zelf ook altijd gezegd dat hij onschuldig is.

Abu-Jamal Death Sentence Thrown Out
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A federal judge threw out Mumia Abu-Jamal's death sentence on Tuesday, ruling that the former journalist and Black Panther is entitled to a new sentencing hearing for killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981.
U.S. District Judge William Yohn ordered the state to conduct the hearing within 180 days.
"Should the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania not have conducted a new sentencing hearing ... the Commonwealth shall sentence petitioner to life imprisonment," the judge said in his 272-page ruling.
Abu-Jamal is America's most famous death-row inmate - revered by a worldwide "Free Mumia" movement as a crusader against racial injustice, and reviled by the officers's supporters as an unrepentant cop-killer who deserves to die.
The judge refused Abu-Jamal's request for a new trial, upholding his 1982 conviction on first-degree murder charges.
The ruling could be appealed to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.
Abu-Jamal was convicted of shooting officer Daniel Faulkner, 25, during the early-morning hours of Dec. 9, 1981, after the officer pulled over Abu-Jamal's brother in a downtown traffic stop.
Celebrities, death-penalty opponents and foreign politicians have since rallied to Abu-Jamal's cause, calling him a political prisoner and saying he was railroaded by a racist justice system.
Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe ruled Nov. 21 that she did not have jurisdiction over Abu-Jamal's petition for a new trial, scuttling his hopes for another round of state-court appeals.
Abu-Jamal exhausted the state appeals process two years ago, but a petition filed in September argued that the defense had new evidence to clear him, including a confession by a man named Arnold Beverly.
In a 1999 affidavit, Beverly claimed he was hired by the mob to kill Faulkner because the officer had interfered with mob payoffs to police.