Assata Shakur, a Black liberation activist who was given political asylum in Cuba after her 1979 escape from a U.S. prison where she had been serving a life sentence for killing a police officer, has died, her daughter and the Cuban government said.
Shakur, who went by Joanne Deborah Chesimard before changing her name, died Thursday in the capital city of Havana due to “health conditions and advanced age,” Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Shakur’s daughter, Kakuya Shakur, confirmed her mother’s death in a Facebook post.
Officials in New Jersey, where Shakur had been arrested, convicted and imprisoned, said she was 78.
A member of Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, Shakur’s case had long been emblematic of the fraught relations between the U.S. and Cuba. American authorities, including President Donald Trump during his first term, demanded her return from the communist nation for decades.
One of Gaza ’s last functioning large hospitals condemned the decision by Doctors Without Borders to...
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died after being poisoned with a rare "dart frog toxin," the...
The Ukrainian Defense Forces have struck a Russian BK-16 transport-landing craft in temporarily occupied Crimea.The General...
President Donald Trump will announce a multi-billion dollar reconstruction plan for Gaza and detail plans for...
