Save Mumia

By Mumia Abu-Jamal

Abu-Jamal has become, perhaps, the most famous political prisoner in the United States and world leaders in the calibre of South Africa's President Nelson Mandela and Pope John Paul II have pleaded with the American authorities to have Abu-Jamal retried.

South Africa's Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu and more than 200 people and organisations have called for a new trial for the black journalist on death row. Abu-Jamal, an award-winning radio journalist in Philadelphia, critic of racism and police violence and member of the Black Panthers, was condemned to death in 1982 for the shooting of a white policeman.

International campaigners are outraged at the manner in which the Philadelphia Police Department and the state of Pennsylvania's justice system are evading justice. "Unless Mumia Abu-Jamal gets a new trial, justice will not be done," the international group said in a full-page advertisement in the New York Times.

"Recent court hearings have raised very serious questions about his trial and the evidence used against him... Throughout this process there has been an orchestrated campaign to obscure the facts and expedite his execution," the advertisement said.

The signatories -- who include Reverend Jesse Jackson, Nobel Prize winner Owen Chamberlain, Angela Davis, Danish Supreme Court Justice Per Walsoe and French parliamentarians Julien Dray and Jean-Luc Melanchon -- charge that the judge hearing the case was biased, the jury did not hear from key witnesses and medical and police evidence failed to prove that Abu-Jamal owned or fired the gun used in the crime.

South African President Nelson Mandela, the European Parliament, Amnesty International and more than 200 German judges have joined the international movement to free the imprisoned journalist over the past years, a website run by one of his support groups says. The New York Times advertisement was published as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court prepared to rule on his appeal for a new trial. Abu-Jamal's lawyers had called for a retrial after one of the main witnesses admitted to lying in 1982.

The following is a statement by Mumia Abu-Jamal, issued from his prison cell at Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, dated 31 October 1998:

"Once again, Pennsylvania's highest court has shown us the best justice that Fraternal Order of Police [FOP] money can buy. Ignoring right reason, their own precedent and fundamental justice, they have returned to the stranglehold of death.

In their echoes of the tortured logic of Judge Albert Sabo, they have reflected a striking fidelity to the DA's office. If it is fair to have a tribunal who are in part admittedly paid by the FOP -- and at least one justice who can double as DA one day and a judge the next in the same case -- then fairness is just as empty a word as justice. To paraphrase Judge Sabo, it is "just an emotional feeling".

In recent months, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has upheld death sentences in cases where an impartial reading of transcripts or pleadings would make an honest affirmation all but impossible. They have ignored all evidence of innocence, overlooked clear instances of jury taint and cast a dead eye on defence attorneys' ineffectiveness. What they have done in my case is par for the course. This is a political decision, paid for by the FOP on the eve of the election. It is a Mischief Night gift from a court that has a talent for the macabre.

I am sorry that this court did not rule on the right side of history. But I am not surprised. Every time our nation has come to a fork in the road with regard to race, it has chosen to take the path of compromise and betrayal. On 29 October 1998, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court committed a collective crime: it damned due process, strangled the fair trial and raped justice.

Even after this legal legerdemain [sleight of hand], I remain innocent. A court cannot make an innocent man guilty. Any ruling founded on injustice is not justice. The righteous fight for life, liberty, and for justice can only continue."