Political Prisoners in the USA

by AFGJ Staff, published on The Alliance for Global Justice, August 15, 2022

** Read

“While Claiming to Defend Freedom Around the World, the U.S. Has Dozens of Political Prisoners—and the Majority are People of Color”,

a comprehensive analysis of Political Imprisonment in the United States today.

Introduction

Below is a list of individuals who are currently incarcerated in the United States because of actions threatening U.S. imperial power, and who were imprisoned for their political activity. AFGJ considers them both political prisoners and “prisoners of empire.” We define political prisoners as people who are jailed based on charges related to resistance to oppression and repression, and whose cases require a political resolution. Political prisoners are imprisoned because of activities that in some way respond to systemic repression and violations of human rights. Whether the circumstances of the alleged crimes are true or false, we strenuously reject the individualized and out-of-context treatment of these cases as simply “common crimes.” Our listing of these prisoners does not constitute an endorsement of the tactics or immediate goals of every individual. We also recognize that people have a right to resist oppression, and the failure to do so can be, itself, a crime against the people. In many cases, those arrested have been set up, falsely accused, railroaded, and/or denied adequate defense and basic human rights. More often than not, they have received harsher sentences than usual because of the political nature of their activities.

We are also guided by a commitment to only include on our list people who are directly oppressed by the abuses and neglect of the neoliberal and militarist U.S. Empire, and who are engaged in or somehow advancing a revolutionary program to end that Empire and the global capitalist model it serves, even if they do so unintentionally. Before the Cuban Revolution, as a private citizen and lawyer, Fidel Castro denounced a right-wing coup in 1952 by Fulgencio Batista, who maintained that his crimes were “legal” because Cuban law allowed for the legitimacy of revolution. Castro responded:

“There was no revolutionary program, no revolutionary theory, no revolutionary statements preceding the coup: (they are) politicians without people, who, in any case, became assailants seizing power. Without a new conception of the state, of society and the legal system, based on profound historical and philosophical principles, there can be no revolution deserving of the right. They cannot even be called political delinquents.”

We need your help. This list is an ongoing draft. If you see any mistakes, persons who should be listed who are not included, have updates on the status of political prisoners or have any other questions or comments, please send them to .

Political Prisoners in the USA

En español

Leonard Peltier, a leader and activist in the American Indian Movement, has been in prison for 43 years as of 2020. Peltier participated in the AIM encampments on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In 1975 an FBI operation led to a confrontation in which two FBI agents died. In a COINTELPRO style operation, he was sentenced to life for murdering two FBI agents. Evidence exonerating Peltier was withheld by the FBI. In his appeal, the government admitted it had no evidence to show he killed the two FBI agents.

Mumia Abu Jamal was arrested in 1981. In COINTELPRO style, he was arrested and sentenced to death in an unfair trial for the murder of a Philadelphia policeman. Mumia was an organizer and campaigner against police abuses in the African-American community and was the President of the Association of Black Journalists. During his imprisonment, he has published several books and other commentaries, notably Live from Death Row. See documentaries Mumia Abu Jamal: A Case For Reasonable Doubt? and Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary or visit the Free Mumia website.

Simón Trinidad, aka Ricardo Palmera, is a long-time leader of mass movements for social change and was a top negotiator for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP). He was arrested in 2004 in Ecuador in the process of negotiating with the UN for the release of FARC prisoners. He was then extradited to the U.S. on charges of narco-trafficking and kidnapping and subjected to four separate trials due to the difficulty the prosecution had in securing a conviction. A Colombian government spokesperson told Alliance for Global Justice in April 2015 that the repatriation of Trinidad to Colombia is key to the success of the peace talks between FARC-EP and the Colombian Government. So far, the U.S. government has refused.

Ivan Vargas is a citizen of Colombia and former member of FARC. He was captured by Colombian forces and then extradited to the United States in violation of Colombia’s self-determination. He is incarcerated here on bogus drug trafficking charges. His repatriation to Colombia is important to create the conditions for a stable peace between FARC and the Colombian government.

Mun Chol Myong  is a North Korean businessman who was extradited from Malaysia for allegedly violating US laws–a country he had never set foot in–for taking measures to circumvent illegal sanctions imposed by the US against North Korea.

Alex Saab was arrested in Cabo Verde on June 12, 2020 and extradited to the U.S. on October 16, 2021, even though no extradition order was provided. Alex Saab was arrested while on a diplomatic mission to buy food and nutritional supplies to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela resulting from the illegal U.S.-enforced sanctions and blockade of the nation. As a diplomat, Saab should have immunity from such detention, and the United Nations as well as other international human rights defenders and organizations have denounced his incarceration.

Abdul Azeez, Malik Bey, and Hanif Shabazz Bey are from the U.S.-occupied Virgin Islands and are the three members of the Virgin Island Three who are still incarcerated. After the murder of eight American tourists to the island during a period of anti-imperial struggle against the U.S., the five men were targeted for being supporters of the struggle, falsely accused of murdering the Americans and tortured. They were each given eight consecutive life sentences and are currently imprisoned in Arizona.

Black Panther Party (BPP), New Afrikan, and Black Liberation Army political prisoners were victims of the COINTELPRO operations in the 1960s-70s when the FBI sought to destroy the Black liberation movement. Those currently incarcerated include, but are not limited to:

• Mutulu Shakur 
• Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly H. Rap Brown.
• Veronza Bowers, imprisoned for 40 years, was convicted of murder on the word of two government informers. There were no eye-witnesses and no evidence independent of these informants. At trial, two relatives of the informants gave testimony insisting that they were lying, which was ignored.
• Ed Poindexter was a target of COINTELPRO, serving life sentences on charges of killing an Omaha policeman. He was convicted on the testimony of a teenage boy who was beaten by the police and threatened with the electric chair if he did not blame the crime on Poindexter and on Mondo we Langa (who died in prison). Amnesty International defends them as “prisoners of conscience.”
• Kamau Sadiki
• Kojo Bomani Sababu (Grailing Brown) was active with the Black Liberation Army and is a New Afrikan Prisoner of War. Sababu attempted to free Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera while they were both incarcerated in Kansas and was convicted of conspiracy.
• Ruchell “Cinque” Magee was already imprisoned when he appeared in a courtroom in 1970 to testify in a trial related to the Soledad Prison Revolt. There, he was spontaneously recruited into the Marin County Courthouse Rebellion, a bid to expose the racist court system and negotiate the liberation of the Soledad Brothers by taking hostages.
• Joseph “Joe-Joe” Brown was radicalized when he was jailed as a young man for his activities in the 30^th and Norris street gang. He is incarcerated today as a result of acts of armed struggle. Bowen is a member of the Black Liberation Army.

To learn more about Black Panther Party (BPP), New Afrikan, and Black Liberation Army political prisoners, see the documentary films The FBI’s War on Black America: COINTELPRO, Cointelpro 101, or visit the Prison Activist Resource Center and the Jericho Movement.

Fred “Muhammad” Burton was jailed in 1970 during a time of massive police crackdowns on Black activists in Philadelphia and framed for the murder of a policeman.

John “Balagoon” Cole and Christopher “Naeem” Trotter were prisoners who intervened directly in 1985 to stop the brutal beating of fellow inmate and beloved “jailhouse” lawyer Lokmar Abdul Wadood Yazidi, aka Lincoln Love at the hands of the “Sons of Light”, a White Supremacist organization of prison guards. Both Cole and Trotter had less than two years to serve in their sentences at the time, but as a result of their life-saving actions, were subsequently sentenced to 88 (Cole) and 142 (Trotter) years, and have spent 33 and 20 years in solitary confinement, respectively.

Rev. Joy Powell was a consistent activist against police brutality, violence and oppression in her community. She was warned by the Rochester Police that she was a target because of her speaking out against corruption. Rev. Joy, a Black woman, was convicted of burglary and assault by an all-white jury; the state provided no evidence and no eyewitnesses. She was given 16 years.

Eric King is a long time anti-racist activist who has been held in prison for his activities since the 2014 uprising against the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. King is scheduled for release in 2023, but has been constantly targeted by authorities during his time in prison. He recently beat trumped up additional charges against him for defending himself against beatings by guards that threatened his life, and he and his supporters are asking for continued vigilance of his case. He has been held in “in some of the most inhumane conditions throughout the system, with only 40 federal prisoners held in solitary confinement for more than a year (Eric King has been held in solitary for more than three years).”

The Water Protector Prisoners were prisoners of empire incarcerated for their resistance to the Dakota Access Pipe Line and its threats to the Missouri River and the Standing Rock Sioux people. Today only Jessica Reznicek remains in jail.

Jessica Reznicek “took action [in 2016] to stop the construction of Dakota Access Pipeline by dismantling construction equipment and pipeline valves. In 2021 she was sentenced to 8 years in prison with a domestic terrorism enhancement. Under normal conditions Jess would have been sentenced to 37 months, but the terrorism enhancement resulted in a sentence of 96 months.”

Joseph Mahmoud Dibee was arrested August 10, 2018 for his participation in a series of arsons and other acts of sabotage between 1995 and 2001 for motivations of eco-defense and animal rights. Dibee was part of the Earth Liberation and Animal Liberation Fronts. Among the allegations against him are the arson of a meat packing plant in Redmond, Oregon, and a power plant in Bend, Oregon.

Byron Shane “Oso Blanco” Chubbuck is a member of the wolf clan Cherokee/Chocktaw. He expropriated money from over a dozen U.S. banks to give to the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico. He became known as “Robin the Hood” because he would let the bank tellers know that he was taking the money to give to the poor.

Ana Belen Montes was a Pentagon intelligence analyst who alerted the Cuban government of plans the U.S. government had of militarized aggression against Cuba. Belen Montes told the judge who heard her case, “I engaged in the activity that brought me before you because I obeyed my conscience rather than the law…We have displayed intolerance and contempt towards Cuba for most of the last four decades. I hope my case in some way will encourage our government to abandon its hostility towards Cuba and to work with Havana in a spirit of tolerance, mutual respect, and understanding.” She was arrested in 2001, pled guilty to one count of espionage, and is being held in solitary confinement in a Fort Worth, Texas.

Daniel Hale was sentenced on July 27, 2021 to 45 months in prison for releasing classified documents on the US drone program and targeted assassinations. Hale participated in the program while with the Air Force from 2009 to 2013 and, upon leaving, became an outspoken critic and a defender of whistle blowers.

Matthew DeHart worked as an intelligence officer for the U.S. National Guard. He was involved with Wikileaks and the hacktivist group Anonymous. Prior to his arrest DeHart ran a server that housed documents bound for Wikileaks. When sensitive documents about the CIA were uploaded to the server by an anonymous third party, DeHart was targeted by the federal government, and was drugged and interrogated about the documents. The federal government brought charges of child pornography against him, allowing them to gain access to his computers.

Shukri Abu-Baker and Ghassan Elashi of the Holy Land Foundation, were each sentenced in 2008 to 65 years in prison. Three others of the Holy Land 5 were sentenced to 13-20 years: Mohammad El-Mezain, Abdulrahman Odeh and Mufid Abdulqader. All were imprisoned for giving more than $12 million to charitable groups in Palestine which funded hospitals, schools and fed the poor and orphans. The U.S. government said these groups were controlled by Hamas, a group it lists as a terrorist organization. Hamas is the elected government of Gaza. Some of these charitable committees were also still receiving U.S. funding through USAID as late as 2006. Testimony was given in the case by an Israeli government agent whose identity and evidence was kept secret from the defense. This was the first time in American legal history that testimony has been allowed from an expert witness with no identity, and therefore immune from perjury. The defendants were acquitted in their first trial when the jury remained deadlocked.

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is an American-educated Pakistani neuroscientist who was convicted in a U.S. court of assault with intent to murder her U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan and sentenced to 86 years in prison. Four British Parliamentarians wrote to President Obama “there was an utter lack of concrete evidence tying Dr. Siddiqui to the weapon she allegedly fired at a U.S. officer,” calling for her to be freed immediately. The weapon she allegedly fired in the small interrogation room did not have her fingerprints, nor was there evidence the gun was fired.

Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar was found guilty in 2007 of “refusal to collaborate with federal grand juries investigating the Palestinian anti-occupation movement.” Despite being acquitted of initial charges of racketeering, he was sentenced to prison for 11 years. Dr. Ashqar, formerly a professor at Howard University, has long been a victim of government surveillance, harassment, and intimidation for his support of Hamas and the people of Palestine.

Brandon Baxter, Joshua “Skelly” Stafford, Connor Stevens, and Doug Wright are the Cleveland 4. They were Occupy Cleveland activists arrested on April 30th, 2012 for planning to blow up a bridge. However, the FBI had infiltrated Occupy Cleveland, created the scheme, and incited the group to join in on the plans. Occupy is a decentralized political protest movement against social and economic inequality, most active from 2011 and 2012. In many U.S. cities, including Cleveland, Occupy protesters formed long-term encampments in central plazas and squares.

Daniel Baker is Anarchist and anti-fascist activist, yoga teacher, and emergency medical technician trainee who was sentenced to almost four years (44 months) by a Florida judge on October 12, 2021. His alleged “crime” was sending a post calling for armed defense of the state capitol against possible attacks from the far right in the wake of the January 6^, 2021 riots in Washingon DC. Baker never organized an armed contingent to go to the capitol, nor did he go himself with a weapon, and he issued no threats against any individuals. According to an article by Natasha Lennard, “Baker will, nonetheless, face considerably more prison time than most January 6 defendants, including those who crossed state lines, small arsenals in tow, with the aim of overturning a presidential election.” Baker is also a former army veteran who went AWOL rather than fight in Iraq.

Bill Dunne is an an anti-authoritarian who was arrested in 1979 for the attempted liberation of an anarchist political prisoner. Dunne is politically active in prison. He organizes solidarity 5k runs with the Anarchist Black Cross, helps educate fellow inmates, and writes and edits for the 4struggle magazine.

Marius Mason (formerly known as Marie Mason) is an environmental political prisoner serving a 22 year sentence. In March 2008, Marius was arrested for vandalism of a laboratory creating genetically modified organisms for Monsanto. He was charged with arson for this and for damaging logging equipment in 1999 and 2000. No one was harmed by these actions. Marius pled guilty to arson charges, but the judge applied a “terrorism enhancement.” He was sentenced to 22 years, and is now serving the longest sentence of any “Green Scare” prisoner.

Alvaro Luna Hernandez (Xinachtli) is a Chicano community organizer and prison activist. He was the National Coordinator of the Ricardo Aldape Guerra Defense Committee and involved in anti-police brutality activism in Houston. He was continually targeted by the police, who in 1996 attempted to arrest him for a spurious robbery charge that was later dismissed. The police used violence to arrest him, but after a days-long manhunt, it was ultimately Luna Hernandez who was sentenced to 50 years in prison on trumped up charges of threatening a sheriff while resisting arrest.

Fran Thompson is a long-time ecological defender. She is in jail for murder since 1994 after she successfully defended herself, killing a man who had threatened to murder her and had broken into her home. What she did was an act of personal defense against the patriarchal system, and she was also targeted because of her eco-defense, including that she was not allowed to enter a plea of self-defense.

Maddesyn George is a political prisoner incarcerated for defending herself from assault by a White man who had raped her only one day before. George is a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes and a survivor of domestic and sexual abuse. She has been incarcerated since July, 2020, and is serving a 6.5 year federal sentence.  We include George as a political prisoner because she is emblematic of two areas of human rights violations that demand a political solution. Women are suffering from an epidemic of misogynist violence and sexual abuse that is rooted in the patriarchal system. There are hundreds of women in US jails related to their self-defense against perpetrators of abuse against them. The legal system treats these as individual cases, neglecting the fact that women are attacked as women, as a class within a system that neglects and even punishes rather than protects them. George is also a native woman, a segment of the population that experiences murder rates 10 times higher than the national average. George is being punished for refusing to become another number in that grim statistic. Maddesyn is emblematic of all women, and of native women, specifically, who have defended themselves against their oppressors, and who are being systemically ignored and, indeed, punished for their self-defense. Some more links with information on both these issues: Survived and Punished; Defend Survivors; Coalition to Stop Violence against Native Women; MMIW USA.

Josh Williams was an active Black Lives Matter protester in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.  He participated in the protests against police brutality, sparked by the shooting of an unarmed teenager by a police officer. At the age of 19, Williams was sentenced to 8 years in prison for arson, burglary, and stealing. He entered a QuickTrip convenience store, which had previously been broken into by other looters, and lit fires inside and outside the store. His shockingly long sentence by a St. Louis judge was meant to intimidate other protestors against police brutality. Williams will be released in 2021.

This is a list of people currently being detained and facing long sentences for their activities during the uprisings against racism and police brutality after George Floyd’s killing in the United States. It is very much a work in progress and subject to change, and may well contain errors. This is not a comprehensive list. This list shows people detained or under house arrest during the uprising and who are facing six months or more in jail. The situation is very much in flux. The repression of this movement by militarized police and federal agents is leading to a spike in politically motivated arrests and is resulting in a new wave of political prisoners and prisoners of Empire. The situation is exacerbated by the leveling of felony charges against so many of those arrested for their resistance. We feel an obligation to provide a listing, even if partial, even if it lacks details, even if it contains errors, to help monitor as best as possible this part of the repression of the uprising. We very much need you and your partnership in this project. If you have information or updates that would affect our listings, if you know about people who should be listed and who are not, or if you see people who are listed who should not be, please let us know. Especially in this case, we cannot do our job accurately or adequately without your help. Please send your emails to or to .

• Urooj Rahman, 31, and Colinford Mattis, 32, are anti-racist activists and lawyers who were arrested for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail through the broken window of a police car during a May 29, 2020 protest in Brooklyn, NY following the murder of George Floyd. Their charges amounted to a minimum sentence of 45 years and a maximum of life in prison. As of October 2021, both have accepted a plea deal  reducing their maximum prison sentence to 10 years. They are currently under home confinement awaiting trial tentatively scheduled for February 8, 2022.
• Lore-Elisabeth Blumenthal, 33, is a Philadelphia woman accused of torching two police cars during protests outside City Hall on May 30, 2020. The FBI was able to track down Blumenthal through Instagram, Etsy, and LinkedIn. At this moment, she remains at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Philadelphia, held without bail, and faces a seven-year mandatory minimum sentence and 80-year maximum sentence if convicted. As of early May (2021), neither the prosecutors’ office nor courts have expressed any clear plans to hold a trial in the foreseeable future.
• Brandon M. Wolfe, 23, Dylan Robinson, 22, Davon Turner, 24, and Bryce Williams, 23, were indicted for the arson of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct during a protest on May 28, 2020. Wolfe and Robinson have previously been charged in federal court for aiding and abetting arson. As of May (2021), all four have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit arson. On April 28 (2021), Robinson was sentenced to four years in federal prison with two years of supervised release, ordered to pay $12 million in restitution. On May 4 (2021), Wolfe was sentenced to 3.5 (41 months) years in prison, also with two years of supervised release and $12 million in restitution. On May 13 (2021), Turner was sentenced to three years in federal prison, also with two years of supervised release and $12 million in restitution. As of June (2021), Williams was sentenced to about two years in prison (27 months), also with two years of supervised release and $12 million in restitution.
  *A meme circulated on social media claiming that Wolfe was a white supremacist and provocateur, but the meme was anonymous and included nothing to back up the allegations. Up until now, we have seen nothing indicating Wolfe’s motivations other than the allegations that he was participating in the uprising in Minneapolis and, specifically, in the burning of the Third Precinct. Unless we receive other substantiated reports, we will consider his actions to be directed against police brutality and racism and the indictment of those involved in the act to be politically-motivated. We encourage those with more information to contact us.
• Alexandria Dea, 26, was charged along with Viet Tran, 21, on July 7, 2020 with a rarely applied count of unauthorized dissemination of intelligence data. On July 1, 2020, police in Des Moines, Iowa arrested 17 protesters who were suspected of burning a police car. During the protest, Dea retrieved a Des Moines Police Department bulletin from the back pocket of a police officer with information and photos of those protesters. Tran shared the document with a local reporter, which was later aired on television and shared on social media. Dea has been charged with theft of the document, which carries a maximum sentence of ten years. As of May (2021), Dea’s charges have not been dropped, but Tran’s have been dismissed on the basis that the document they helped to disseminate did not constitute any kind of intelligence data. It is not clear if Dea remains detained, but she has drawn a different judge and continues to await trial.

There are still 36 inmates held at Guantanamo Prison in indefinite detention without trial, most since 2002. The Guantanamo Prison is part of the U.S. base there illegally occupying Cuban land, and is notorious for its inhumane and degrading conditions and systemic use of torture. Following is a list of the inmates from the closeguantanamo.org website:

Please also note that the numbers before the men’s names are their ISN numbers (the “Internment Security Numbers” by which they are identified in Guantánamo).

Immigrant detention centers hold undocumented workers, families and students. Every year more than 400,000 immigrants are detained, and on any given day there are around 40,000 persons in immigrant detention centers. These individuals are jailed because of the U.S.’ fervent anti-immigrant political ideology.

As recently as the 1980s, immigrants were rarely detained. They were either accused of misdemeanors and quickly deported or permitted to go about their lives pending immigration hearings. In recent years there has been a massive boom in immigrant detention and deportation. Even though we are experiencing the lowest level of immigration from Mexico into the U.S. in 45 years, private immigrant detention centers are a booming and highly protected industry. The U.S. government has promised to supply enough undocumented immigrants to keep 36,000 beds in detention centers occupied all year round.

Racism, class repression, and xenophobia are the political forces underlying the boom in immigrant detainees. The U.S. government increasingly criminalizes undocumented people. Rather than treating them like low-level civil offenders, our new policy is to target them arbitrarily, and once they are arrested to lock them up. Being undocumented is a highly-politicized crime. Those incarcerated in immigration detention centers are a class of Prisoners of Empire too numerous to name.

Mass incarceration is a foundational element of racist and anti-worker oppression. Not every target of state repression makes it to jail or is given a chance to defend themselves in court or even be charged with a crime. Many of those who die as a result of state-sanctioned violence are guilty of nothing more than fitting an ethnic profile that makes one a suspect by virtue of the color of their skin. Every 28 hours in 2012 someone employed or protected by the US government killed a Black man, woman or child.

While non-hispanic Whites make up 63.7% of the U.S. population, people of African heritage and Latinos make up almost two thirds of those in U.S. jails. Persons lacking a GED or high school diploma make up 47 percent of inmates, and the annual income of the incarcerated, prior to their arrests, was 41% less than their peers among the un-incarcerated.

With under 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. jails 25% of the world prison population, with 2.3 million prisoners. The development and growth of the mass incarceration model took place at the same time crime rates have been in decline. The primary purpose of the U.S. prison system appears to be about social control, intimidation of resistance and the maintenance of a massive and legal form of slave labor.

Conditions in U.S. prisons reflect a lack of basic health care, isolation from family and community, lack of educational opportunity, widespread incidents of torture and beatings, and generally degrading treatment. U.S. prisons hold over 80,000 persons in solitary confinement. In 2012 alone the Justice Department estimates there had been 216,000 victims of prison rape.

While we do not call all prisoners political prisoners, we must note that they are all subjects to a politically motivated system of oppression. The repercussions of the U.S. incarceration model are felt acutely far beyond the locked doors and bars of our jails. The politics of fear is diffused throughout U.S. society, particularly for poor people and racial minorities. We have seven million U.S. residents who are in prison, on parole or on probation. When we consider the massive government monitoring of our population, we can justifiably call the United States a prison nation.

We want to acknowledge Stan Smith and the Chicago Committee to Free the Five (773-376-7521, ) for initiating this project and compiling the original list in 2013. 

*Featured Image: This is part of a popular education initiative to expose and oppose human rights violations in and by the U.S.