National News…
Amnesty International Supports New Trial for Mumia
“. . . The interests of justice would best be served by the granting of a new trial to Mumia Abu-Jamal.”
The latest shot to be fired across the bow concerning the case of death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal comes from the human rights organization Amnesty International. AI conducted a thorough investigation of the available evidence, including the trial transcript and came to the following conclusion:
“The conviction and death sentence against Mumia Abu-Jamal illustrate many of Amnesty International’s long-term concerns regarding the administration of capital punishment in the United States of America (USA). Many of those condemned to death in the USA have been sentenced after proceedings which violated international standards [emphasis added]. Concerns in this case include Mumia Abu-Jamal’s inadequate legal representation at his 1982 trial; a trial judge apparently far more concerned to expedite the trial than to ensure the impartial and fair administration of justice; and the politicization of the judicial process and possible bias of the appeal courts.”
Amnesty’s report does not take a position on Abu-Jamal’s guilt due to “contradictory and incomplete evidence” and has not identified him as a political prisoner, but the report does confirm much of what his supporters and death penalty opponents have been saying for a while now.
Amnesty International also indicts the infamous FBI-run COINTELPRO domestic counter-intelligence program, which also tracked Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. before their murders. Amnesty expressed “concern over the activities of a government counterintelligence program, which appeared to number Abu-Jamal among its targets… the organization is concerned that political statements attributed to [Abu-Jamal] as a teenager were improperly used by the prosecution in its efforts to obtain a death sentence against him.”
The report concludes that “Amnesty International therefore believes that the interests of justice would best be served by the granting of a new trial to Mumia Abu-Jamal.”
The entire report is available on the Internet at: www.amnesty.org.