BY JASON COUGHLIN AND CONNIE ALLEN
PHILADELPHIA - More than 600 people took part in a December 6 "People's International Tribunal for Justice for Mumia Abu- Jamal." The event took place inside the Blue Horizon, located in downtown Philadelphia. Supporters of freedom for the journalist and political activist came from as far as Boston, Chicago, and Mississippi in the United States, along with more than 50 people from Canada, and several from France and Germany. Participants listened to dozens of presentations on the facts behind Abu-Jamal's frame-up, conviction, and the political events that led up to it.

Conducted in the form of a trial, the event put a spotlight on the unfair trial Abu-Jamal received while providing a platform for opponents of the death penalty and police brutality to speak out. Abu-Jamal is currently sitting on Pennsylvania's death row. He and his supporters are fighting for a new trial that would include a jury of his peers, as well as evidence and testimony that was suppressed in the original trial that declared him guilty of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981.

Several witnesses for the prosecution in Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial have since indicated that they were pressured by Philadelphia police to give false testimony implicating Abu- Jamal in the 1981 shooting. Pamela Jenkins and Veronica Jones, both young prostitutes at the time, testified in recent hearings that they took the witness stand against Abu-Jamal in his original trial after being threatened with arrest by Philadelphia police. Jenkins reported that Cynthia White, a key witness for the prosecution, told her that she was also offered immunity from arrest for testifying against Abu-Jamal. William Singletary, who testified in 1995 that he had seen someone other than Abu-Jamal shoot Faulkner, was pressured to sign a false statement at the time of the original trial.

At the end of the event, an international panel of observers endorsed a series of demands for an investigation into Mumia Abu-Jamal's trial and subsequent imprisonment. This panel included South African poet and professor Dennis Brutus; David DuBois, son of W.E.B. DuBois; Michael Meeropol, son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953; and Gamal Nkrumah, son of Kwame Nkrumah.

The demands include Abu-Jamal's immediate release; an investigation of the Philadelphia Police Department; an investigation into the bombing of the headquarters of MOVE, Abu- Jamal's organization, in 1985; the removal of all public officials involved in Abu-Jamal's frame-up from office; and an investigation by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights into his case.

Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 people marched to United Nations Plaza in San Francisco December 6 as part of the international day of solidarity with the framed-up activist. The demonstrators also demanded an end to the death penalty and police brutality. Speakers at the San Francisco action included Ramona Africa, a leader of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Ossie Davis, actor and civil rights activist who chairs the Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal; and Robbie Meeropol, also the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In the weeks preceding the demonstration, many Bay Area campuses hosted educational and building activities.

In a related development, Abu-Jamal's supporters packed the courtroom October 8 for a U.S. court of appeals hearing on whether the activists' rights are being violated by prison officials who open all his mail, including photocopying legal correspondence and forwarding it to the governor's office. Prison officials began this harassment after Abu-Jamal's writings were published as the book Live from Death Row, which they claimed violated prison rules prohibiting inmates from pursuing any business or profession.

Osborne Hart in San Francisco contributed to this article.  
 
 
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