Belated Tribute to Assata Shakur
On 25 September 2025, former Black Panther Party member Assata Shakur died at the age of 78 in Havana, Cuba, where she had lived in political exile since 1985. The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced her death the following day. Assata Shakur was a political activist in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. As a member of the Black Panther Party, she was targeted by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) under its counter-intelligence programme, COINTELPRO. She was framed for the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1979 she escaped from prison and since 1985 has been in political exile in Cuba.
Assata Olugbala Shakur, also known as Joanne Chesimard, an activist with the Black Liberation Army, was exiled in Cuba for four decades, died of unspecified health conditions and “advanced age”, in Havana, aged 78. Shakur had been on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list for years after she escaped in 1979 from a New Jersey women’s prison, where she was serving a life sentence following her murder conviction in a shoot-out that killed a New Jersey state trooper and a fellow activist. Shakur maintained her innocence and in 1984 reappeared in Cuba, where she was granted asylum by former President Fidel Castro.
Shakur was born JoAnne Deborah Byron on 16 July 1947 in New York City and was raised between the city and Wilmington, North Carolina. She was the step-aunt and godmother of the
