Terminally-Ill Black Revolutionary Mutulu Shakur Given Compassionate Release From US Prison
Dr. Mutulu Shakur in 2012
Former Black Liberation Army (BLA) member and pioneering acupuncturist Mutulu Shakur has been released from prison by the US Parole Board, following petitions by activists. However, while he has long claimed innocence, his release has not come because of exoneration, but because he is dying of cancer.Shakur was granted compassionate release from FMC Lexington last month, US media reported on Thursday.Although Shakur’s release has been sought by family members and activists for years, the parole board has denied his petitions 10 previous times. However, in April, a Bureau of Prisons doctor declared that Shakur was terminally ill with bone marrow cancer and had only months left to live.A longtime activist in several militant Black liberation groups from the 1960s until the 1980s, Shakur was also a key figure in pioneering the use of acupuncture to treat heroin addiction at the detoxification clinic at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. The program’s success was due in part to accompanying political education, which cast the epidemic of drug addiction among Black Americans as part of the centuries-long system of racial oppression, rather than as a personal failing.Shakur is also known as the ex-husband of Afeni Shakur, another member of the Black Panther Party, and as the stepfather of famed rapper Tupac Shakur.Shakur was accused and later found guilty of being involved in a 1981 robbery of an armored car in Nanuet, New York, in which a security guard and two police officers were killed, and three other guards and officers injured. He was given 60 years in prison. Shakur has since expressed remorse for the lives lost.
