Returning from Cuba with a package worth one million

[Professor Devlin]

I am sure there are a few fellows on here that would be up to snatch this woman out of Cuba. Three years ago, I started to look into what it would take to get the job done. The reward was only 150K at that time. Not worth a lifetime in a Cuban prison.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/in ... 178400.xml

[coldharvest]

http://www.njsp.org/want/chesimard.html

[Professor Devlin]

Here are some more photos. You would think anyone with a reward on their head would not have photos up on their website. Godspeed to her future captors.

http://www.assatashakur.org/gallery.htm

[SeanPatrick]

Well, I can help you get there for a very affordable price... Send me an email (sean@terra.com.gt) if you would like to fly there. I can arrange everything through a friend and Uncle Sam won't have to know :-D. Your passport will not be marked up or stamped.

[SeanPatrick]

What if Castro or a family member of his decides to take the reward?? Will the U.S. pay a Cuban National?

[Texas Carnie Roadshow]

Registrant: Kambui, Jacuma

po box 1720
Stone Mountain, GA 30087
US
Phone: 6786430034
Fax: 123 123 1234

Domain Name: ASSATASHAKUR.ORG

Administrative Contact , Technical Contact :
Kambui, Jacuma
webbrother@thetalkingdrum.com
po box 1720
Stone Mountain, GA 30087
US
Phone: 6786430034
Fax: 123 123 1234

Record expires on 26-Feb-2006
Record created on 26-Feb-2003
Database last updated on 08-Feb-2005

Domain servers in listed order: Manage DNS

DNS5.HOSTRACK.COM 63.105.78.1
DNS6.HOSTRACK.COM 63.105.78.2

IP Address: 204.10.137.61 (ARIN & RIPE IP search)
IP Location: -(-)
Record Type: Domain Name
Server Type: Apache 2
Web Site Status: Active
DMOZ 1 listings
Y! Directory: see listings
Secure: No
E-commerce: No
Traffic Ranking: 4
Data as of: 21-Jun-2004

Here's a start, with the person who runs the site.

[realrescue3]

Its been my experiance that Mexicans are sometimes best used getting other Mexicans out of Mexico and so on and so forth, so that could be the key in getting her out. Not necessarily always true though when I snatched americans out of Mexico though.

Political asylum doesnt necessarly mean she has any State security either, but I would imagine she is still underground there. Before ever going on any "long distance" assigments like this I always did my best to get an address or location first, before leaving.

My first call would be to Justice to see any if what additional info they had on her, then work it from there.

Of course any pretext type setups will be viewed suspiciously
by herself and her supporters and would have to be very tricky
to get her nailed down to one place where a snatch would be possible. I noticed on her site she likes to be interviewed and views her status as somewhat celebrity, so that might be exploitable.

Why dont we set her up for an interview RYP, pending a big book deal of course? We could lay down a good recon and take it from there.

Ever been to Cuba? I hear its nice this time of year....

[Professor Devlin]

With the type of press that this is pulling in, I think she will have to go underground in Cuba or ask the state for help. I can see one of her own people draging her out with that type of reward on the line. The U.S. most likely would waive the wet foot, dry foot policy for anyone that would bring her out and at least get picked up by the Coast Guard. Along with the reward, a quick fellow should be able to work out a book or movie deal as well. There is even more money to make off the back end.

[RYP]

The snatch would be the easy part. You need to get her off the island so you need a boat. Then you have to get her here and I think you would want to confirm payment before you show up. Technically its kidnapping and who knows what kind of dufus human rights lawyers would cause you to spend more than a million to collect your million (which is only about half a milion after taxes.

You would want to have the money paid to an offshore entity and you would want to make damn sure you got paid...

Setting up an interview is the easy part..



Raising the stakes to bring in a cop-killer
Feds are offering a $1 million reward to snare Chesimard, now in Cuba
Monday, May 02, 2005
BY RICK HEPP
Star-Ledger Staff
The U.S. Department of Justice has posted a $1 million bounty for the capture of New Jersey's most-wanted fugitive: convicted cop-killer JoAnne Chesimard, the former Black Liberation Army member who escaped a state prison a quarter of a century ago.

The reward will be announced by Attorney General Peter Harvey and State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes at the State Police headquarters in West Trenton today, -- the 32nd anniversary of the slaying of state Trooper Werner Foerster during a gunfight on the New Jersey Turnpike. Chesimard was convicted of murdering Foerster by shooting him twice as he lay wounded.

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The $1 million will be the largest reward ever set by the federal government on a New Jersey fugitive, state police say. Police had offered $150,000 for Chesimard's capture since 1998.

Authorities know Chesimard is living in Cuba under political asylum. They hope this new reward will provide more incentive for bounty hunters.

"She is now 120 pounds of money," State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes said. "It is going to exert pressures that weren't in place nationally and internationally before. And we're going to follow up to make sure everybody is aware of this both inside and outside of Cuba."

Harvey and Fuentes also will announce that the Justice Department has placed Chesimard on a variety of international terrorist watch lists for the first time.

"We owe it to the family (of the slain trooper)," Fuentes said. "We owe it to the New Jersey State Police and we owe it to every citizen in the state of New Jersey to bring her back and we will."

Harvey and Fuentes last Friday were on hand with troopers and Foerster's family to name a Route 18 bridge in East Brunswick over the Turnpike the Werner Foerster Overpass.

Chesimard, now 57 and living under the name Assata Shakur, was convicted in 1977 by a Middlesex County jury of murdering Foerster during a gunbattle on the New Jersey Turnpike in East Brunswick. A second trooper, James Harper, was wounded.

The 1973 shootout began minutes after Harper pulled over Chesimard and two companions for a faulty tail light, according to State Police files. Foerster, patrolling nearby, responded to provide back up.

The troopers asked the driver, Clark Squire, to step out of the vehicle after his license did not match the sedan's registration, the files show. As Foerster questioned Squire, Harper walked around the car to speak with Chesimard and her brother-in-law, James Costan.

That's when shots were fired from within the car and both troopers returned fire, according to police. A bullet struck Foerster, knocking him to the ground and leaving him incapacitated.

"Chesimard then took the weapon away from Foerster and shot him in the neck and head," Fuentes said. "This isn't the result of a toe-to-toe exchange. This is an execution and there's a clear distinction."

Chesimard's attorneys denied she shot Foerster, saying she was too seriously wounded to pull a trigger after being struck twice by shots from Harper's gun.

After the vehicle drove away, Harper, dazed from a gunshot wound to the left shoulder, staggered to a nearby State Police barracks.

Within minutes, police found the vehicle abandoned on the side of the road five miles south of the shooting, the files show. Troopers arrested Chesimard after she walked toward them with her hands in the air. The body of Costan, who died in the gunfight, was found near the car.

Squire, whom troopers saw running from the car, was captured the next day in a wooded area in East Brunswick. Now 67, he remains in a Pennsylvania prison serving a life sentence. Last August, a state parole board panel denied his request for release.

In 1979, Chesimard escaped from the Clinton Correctional Institution for Women in Hunterdon County -- now known as the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women -- when three gunmen posing as visitors took two guards hostage and drove her out of the facility's maximum-security unit in a van.

Three months ago, State Police sent Lt. Col. Juan Mattos to an international policing conference in the Dominican Republic to ask Caribbean, Central American and South American authorities for help in arresting Chesimard.

"We want to make sure she does not have a way to escape from Cuba and we want to apply pressure to her while she is in Cuba," Harvey said.

About a year ago, Harvey and Fuentes approached Joseph Billy, then Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Newark office and now deputy assistant director for counter-intelligence in Washington, D.C. Billy helped them apply to the FBI to increase the reward. Harvey and Fuentes presented their arguments directly to FBI Director Robert Mueller, and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed the order last Thursday.


Rick Hepp covers criminal justice. He can be reached at rhepp@starledger.com or (609) 989-0398.

[RYP]

From exile with love: Former Black Panther Assata Shakur speaks to America from Cuba

[Editor’s note: Final Call Staff Writer Nisa Islam Muhammad traveled to Cuba with a group of 15 journalists under the guidance of DeWayne Wickham and the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies. They are documenting the African influence in the Americas. While there, she was granted an exclusive interview with exiled former Black Panther Assata Shakur.]

HAVANA, Cuba (FinalCall.com)—Assata Shakur is a Black American folk hero. She is a freedom fighter that escaped the chains of oppression. She made it to the other side. She is a sister that defied the definitions of expected behavior by a Black woman.

Her life is the subject of books, movies and poetry. In her own words, she speaks on Cuba and terrorism, differences between Blacks in Cuba and the U.S., living in exile and her hopes for a new world:

"When I was in the Black Panther Party, they (United States) called us terrorists. How dare they call us terrorists when we were being terrorized? Terror was a constant part of my life. I was living under apartheid in North Carolina. We lived under police terror.

"People have to see what’s really happening. Cuba has never attacked anybody. Cuba has solidarity with other countries. They send teachers and doctors to help the people of other countries. It believes in solidarity.

"To see Cuba called a terrorist country is an insult to reality. If people come to Cuba, they’ll see a reality unlike what they’re told in America. This country wants to help, not hurt. The U.S. government has lied to its people. The U.S. government invents lies like Cuba is a terrorist country to give a pretext to destroy it.

"Ronald Reagan convinced people that the little country Grenada was a threat to the big United States, that allowed the U.S. to go into Grenada.

"The people in the U.S. have to struggle against a system of organized lies. When President Carter was here they said Cuba was involved in biotechnology to create bioterrorism, but now they back track and say it isn’t so. They lied and they continue to lie about Cuba.

"Look at the struggle with Elian (Gonzales). Look at the terrorism committed by the Miami terrorists, the Miami Mafia. Those people (Cubans who fled after the revolution) are ex-plantation owners, exploiters of people. They want to make Cuba the same kind of place it was before but that’s not going to happen."

Her name means "she who struggles," and that is the life she’s led. From growing up in racist Wilmington, N.C., to her activism with the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army (BLA), Ms. Shakur has struggled:

"My life wasn’t beautiful and creative before I became politically active. My life was totally changed when I began to struggle."

But that’s what it means to be Black in the Americas, a life of struggle. Blacks in Cuba and the United States share a history of slavery yet their paths separate in how they view their lives. I asked Sis. Assata what she saw as the differences between Blacks in Cuba and the United States:

"We’ve (Blacks in America) forgotten where we came from. People in Cuba have not lost their memory. They don’t suffer from historical and cultural amnesia. Cuba has less material wealth than America but are able to do so much with so little because they know where they come from.

"This was a maroon country. The maroons escaped from slavery and started their own community. Everyone needs to identify with their own history. If they know their history, they can construct their future.

"The Cubans identify with those who fought against slavery. They don’t identify with the slave master. Those who made the revolution won’t let the people forget what happened to them. The people here seriously study history.

"We have to de-Eurocentrize the history we learn. We have to give the real perspective of what happened. We have to create a world to know and remember our own. I had no idea how ignorant I was until I came to Cuba. I had no knowledge of authors, filmmakers and artists outside of America. We believe we’re free but we’re not. Our world vision is tainted.

"We are oppressed people in the U.S. and don’t even know it. We have fewer opportunities to be doctors and lawyers as tuition increases. Our problem is that we want to belong to a society that wants to oppress us. We want to be the plantation owner. In Cuba, we want to change the plantation to a collective farm."

The time is 1973 and an incident of what would now be called "racial profiling" takes place on the New Jersey Turnpike. Ms. Shakur, actively involved in the Black Liberation Army (BLA), is traveling with Malik Zayad Shakur (no relation) and Sundiata Acoli. State troopers stop them, reportedly because of a broken headlight.

A trooper also explains they were "suspicious" because they had Vermont license plates. The three are made to exit the car with their hands up. All of a sudden, shots were fired.

That much everybody seems to agree on. What happened next changed the course of history for Assata Shakur. Shots were fired and when all was said and done, state trooper Werner Foerster and Malik Shakur were killed. Ms. Shakur and Mr. Acoli were charged with the death of state trooper Foerster.

The trial found them both guilty. The verdict was no surprise. But many question the racial injustice by the all-White jury and admitted perjury by the trial’s star witness:

"I was shot with my arms in the air. My wounds could not have happened unless my arms were in the air. The bullet went in under my arm and traveled past my clavicle. It is medically impossible for that to happen if my arms were down.

"I was sentenced to life plus 30 years by an all-White jury. What I saw in prison was wall-to-wall Black flesh in chains. Women caged in cells. But we’re the terrorists. It just doesn’t make sense."

In a letter to Kofi Owusu dated August 24, 1973 from the Middlesex County Jail in New Brunswick, N.J., she describes the life behind bars:

"i (sic) can’t begin to imagine how many sisters have been locked in this cell (the detention cell) and all the agony they felt and tears they shed. This is the cell where they put the sisters who are having hard times, kicking habits or who had been driven mad from too much oppression.

"It’s moods like this that make me aware of how glad i am to be a revolutionary. i know who our enemy is, and i know that me and these swine cannot live peacefully on the same planet. i am a part of a family of field niggas and that is something very precious.

"So many of my sisters are so completely unaware of who the real criminals and dogs are. They blame themselves for being hungry; they hate themselves for surviving the best way they know how, to see so much fear, doubt, hurt, and self hatred is the most painful part of being in this concentration camp.

"Anyway, in spite of all, i feel a breeze behind my neck, turning to a hurricane and when i take a deep breath I can smell freedom."

She spent six and a half years in prison, two of those in solitary confinement. During that time she gave birth to her daughter Kakuya.

In 1979, she was liberated by comrades in a daring escape that continues to infuriate the New Jersey State Troopers. There was a nation-wide search for her. In 1984 she went to Cuba and was united with her daughter:

"When I came to Cuba, I expected everyone to look like Fidel (Castro). But you see everything and everyone is different. I saw Black, White, Asians all living and working together. The Cuban women were so elegantly dressed and groomed.

"People would just talk to me in the street. I would wonder why until I realized that people are not afraid of each other. People in America are afraid to walk the streets; it’s not like that here.

"I realized that I had some healing to do. I didn’t know the extent of my wounds until I came to Cuba. I began to heal with my work, raising my daughter and being a part of a culture that appreciates you.

"Living in Cuba means being appreciated by society, not depreciated by society. No matter what we do in America, no matter what we earn, we’re still not appreciated by American society."

Who are the people on the tiny island nation of Cuba only 90 miles from Florida? Who are these people that dare to say "no" to America? Who are these 11 million revolutionaries that resist in the face of the most powerful country in the world:

"Cubans feel like they have power. No matter who they are. They see themselves as part of a world. We just see ourselves as part of a ’hood. They identify with oppressed people all over the world.

"When the Angolans were fighting against South Africa, they asked Cuba for help. Soldiers were sent. They went gladly.

"Cubans have a different perspective of outrage and justice. A White Cuban soldier came back from fighting and expressed his disdain for the Whites that were supporting apartheid.

"I just looked at him because in my mind he was White like they were but that’s not how he saw himself. He couldn’t understand how the South Africans could support apartheid.

"Anytime you have a country that makes people feel indignant about atrocities, wherever they are, that country has a special place in my heart. Cuba is trying to end exploitation and atrocities."

For nearly 20 years, she has carved out a life for herself in Cuba. She lives in exile and while many rejoice in her new life, America has not forgotten her alleged crimes. In 1997, the New Jersey State Troopers wrote to the Pope asking for the Pontiff’s help in having her extradited.

Former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd-Whitman issued a $100,000 enticement for anyone to assist in the return of Assata Shakur. Congress issued H.R. 254 calling on Cuba to send her back, which was supported by most Black congresspersons.

In the absence of normalized relations with Cuba, there is no binding extradition treaty between Cuba and the United States.

What is it like to live in exile? What is it like to be away from family and friends:

"Living in exile is hard. I miss my family and friends. I miss the culture, the music, how people talk, and their creativity. I miss the look of recognition Black women give each other, the understanding we express without saying a word.

"I adjusted by learning to understand what was going on in the world. The Cubans helped me to adjust. I learned joys in life by learning other cultures. It was a privilege to come here to a rich culture.

"I had a big fear that the Cubans would hate me when I arrived. They are very sophisticated. They were able to separate the people from America, like me, from the government."

What message does she have for the youth of our people? What does she want people to know about her life:

"I don’t see myself as that different from sisters who struggle for social justice. In the ’60s it was easier to identify racism. There were signs that told you where you belonged. We had to struggle to eliminate apartheid in the South. Now we have to know the other forms that exist today.

"We had to learn that we’re beautiful. We had to relearn something forcefully taken from us. We had to learn about Black power. People have power if we unite. We learned the importance of coming together and being active. That fueled me.

"We knew what a token was then. Today young people don’t see Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell as tokens. That’s a problem.

"I realized that I was connected to Africa. I wasn’t just a Colored girl. I was part of a whole world that wanted a better life. I’m part of a majority and not a minority. My life has been a life of growth. If you’re not growing, you’re not going to understand real love. If you’re not reaching out to help others then you’re shrinking. My life has been active. I’m not a spectator.

"We can’t afford to be spectators while our lives deteriorate. We have to truly love our people and work to make that love stronger."

Ms. Shakur is finishing another book about her life in exile and her experiences in Cuba.

Final Call, Web Posted 06-11-2002

[Expat]

Why not just find a way to Gitmo, combination of land and sea is probably safer, then turn her over to DOJ there.

[Expat]

Wouldn't everyone agree it's logical that she was planted somewhere within a reasonable distance from Habana? maybe no further out than Pinar or Matanzas. Snatch then overland to some Santiago mangrove, then round the corner to Guantanamo. Would be a tough trip the entire length of the Island and you might want to figure some way of calling ahead to Gitmo (they don't exactly roll out the welcome mat)

[RYP]

Juristiction. This is a New Jersey warrant . Ya gotta have the paper work and show up at the right jail to hand off. You don't want Feds taking your package cuz you don't git no reeeeward..

That's why I am telling you the hard part is getting her back to Nooo Joisy without being intercepted by Coast Guard, Homeland Dufus or any federal agency.

[redfax]

Hmm.. anyone have a spare diesel sub stashed anywhere?
I'm sure expat could figure a way of avoiding the sonar systems around, of course they'll know it was him, because their sonar screens will be jammed with some odd czech satallite TV rerun programming.

[doyle]

Shit, get me an old chevy truck, a coupla plastic barrels and I could float her up the Gulf Stream to NJ. I'd get my buddy to go out fishing, pick us up off the coast, and a cool 1 million.

It may not be worth it though after I get stiffed with the fed tax, state tax, local tax, etc... Shit, my luck she would end up costing me money.