Assata Shakur, Black Freedom Fighter, Is Now On FBI Most Wanted Terrorist List

Assata Shakur After Her Capture on May 2, 1973 in New Jersey, a photo by Pan-African News Wire Photo File on Flickr.

Assata Shakur, Black Freedom Fighter, Is Now On FBI Most Wanted Terrorist List

Assata Shakur, who was accused in 1973 of killing a New Jersey state trooper, has become the first woman on the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists. The FBI and the state of New Jersey announced on Thursday that a reward of $2 million would be offered for the capture of Shakur, also known as Joanne Chesimard.

Shakur, who had been a Black Panther and then a member of the Black Liberation Army, has been on the run since 1979, when she escaped from a Hunterdon County, New Jersey prison. She was serving a life sentence in the death of NJ State Trooper Werner Foerster, who was killed during a May 2, 1973 traffic stop. Shakur fled to Cuba, which granted her political asylum and will not participate in her extradition.

Shakur says she was born Joanne Chesimard in New York in 1947, though no record of her birth exists - a striking lack which Shakur has persistently referred to throughout the years as a symbol of inequality for African-Americans in the United States.

Shakur, now 65, was said during her trial to have shot Trooper Werner Foerster after she and two BLA members were pulled over while traveling on the New Jersey Turnpike. Trooper James Harper, the officer who pulled them over not far from state police headquarters in East Brunswick, saw a broken taillight on their Pontiac LeMans and became suspicious when driver Clark Squire could not say who owned the Pontiac, which had Vermont license plates. Harper testified that Trooper Werner Foerster arrived as backup just as passengers in the vehicle were said by police to have begun firing automatic handguns, killing Foerster.

Between 1973 and 1977, Shakur was indicted for seven different crimes ranging from bank robbery to kidnapping to the murder of Foerster. These indictments were either dismissed or resulted in acquittals or hung juries, until she was finally convicted of Foerster's murder.

It has been alleged that her treatment as a prisoner amounted to abuse. Before being transferred to the prison from which she escaped, she was held for a time in a male prison. In 1979, a UN panel on human rights treated her as a political prisoner and concluded that her treatment was "totally unbefitting any prisoner".

The Black Liberation Army rose in numbers following the decline of the Black Panther Party, of which Shakur was also a part. The Justice Department and the Fraternal Order of Police hold the BLA responsible for dozens of actions ranging from the planting of bombs in public places to plane hijacking. Most of the acts involved the targeting of police officers.