Infoavond + benefiet Free Mumia Abu Jamal
Waar: MKZ, eerste schinkelstraat 14, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Wanneer: 08/01/2016 - 19:00
Benefiet eten (vegan) + info met slides over de campagne voor Mumia Abu Jamal en andere politieke gevangenen in de VS.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: 34 Years of Wrongful Incarceration & A Life Threatening Current Health Crisis
December 9th, was the 34th anniversary of the wrongful arrest, deadly beating, incarceration, and beginning of the framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal so that he was ultimately convicted and sentenced to death. The international movement succeeded in finally removing Mumia from Death Row in 2012, but the State has not ceased its efforts to kill him. Now he faces a deadly diseased, untreated and only made worse, by the Department of Corrections.
“It took an informal visit from a movement doctor to determine the cause of Mumia’s medical crisis. That doctor determined, just by eye balling Mumia, that the problem was his untreated chronic and active Hepatitis C. But now the Department of Corrections is withholding treatment until it's too late to save him,” said Johanna Fernandez of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home.
“A legal victory in Mumia's medical case will also be a victory for the more than 10,000 PA prisoners afflicted by Hepatitis C, who have filed a class action suit, just as our struggle for Mumia when he was on Death Row had a huge impact on growing opposition to the death penalty” said Suzanne Ross of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC).
“Mumia Abu Jamal was viciously attacked and framed by the Philadelphia police 34 years ago, but in light of the current attention on police violence and corruption across the nation, the truth in this case will surface among a new generation of freedom fighters. Our work is not done until he is released,” said Ramona Africa, survivor of the MOVE bombing of 1985.
Immediately after the end of Abu-Jamal’s trial in 1982, fifteen of the thirty-five police officers who collected evidence at the crime scene of Officer Daniel Faulkner’s shooting were convicted and jailed on charges that included graft, corruption, and tampering with evidence in hundreds of other cases. Chief Inspector Alfonzo Giordano, who led the crime scene investigation in Mumia’s case, was among those officers. But the jury that heard Mumia’s trial was not aware of these rampant police practices, so they believed what the police said at trial.
The photographs of the crime scene taken by freelance photographer Pedro Polakoff, discovered in 2006, demonstrate the illegal methods employed by the police in the Abu-Jamal case. These photos totally contradict the prosecutor’s version of what happened at the crime scene. They also expose Officer James Forbes, who testified in court that he properly handled the two guns allegedly retrieved at the Faulkner crime scene, as holding the weapons with bare hands. In 1995, an investigation of the Philadelphia police department discovered that practices like these were widespread in Philadelphia. Amidst the scandal, former Philly DA Lynne Abraham told the Legal Intelligencer that her office would “discard any cases where evidence surfaces that even one of the officers involved in an investigation lied in court or in written reports.”
Because of the uninterrupted history of judicial and prosecutorial corruption and police conspiracy in this case and because of widespread evidence of Mumia’s innocence, his supporters call on officials of Philadelphia to make good on Lynne Abraham’s promise through the immediate release of Mumia Abu-Jamal. We call for Mumia’s release at the same time as we demand IMMEDIATE MEDICAL TREATMENT FOR HIS AND MORE THAN 10,000 OTHER PA PRISONERS WHO ARE INFECTED WITH HEPATITIS C!