FBI Director Kash Patel took to X on Sunday to rebuke Tupac’s godmother Assata Shakur, stating that the deceased Black American liberation activist didn’t “fight for justice.” Patel, 45, also urged people not to mourn her.
As previously reported by Face2Face Africa, Shakur, who was given political asylum in Cuba after escaping from prison where she was serving a life sentence for allegedly killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973, passed away on Thursday, September 25, at the age of 78.
“Joanne Chesimard [Shakur’s birth name] didn’t ‘fight for justice.’ She murdered New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in cold blood, then fled to Cuba to escape accountability. The FBI never stopped calling her what she was: a terrorist,” Patel wrote alongside a photo of Shakur’s wanted poster.
“Mourning her is spitting on the badge and the blood of every cop who gave their life in service.”
The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement last Friday that Shakur died “due to health conditions and advanced age.”
Confirming her death in a Facebook post, her daughter, Kakuya Shakur, wrote, “Words cannot describe the depth of loss that I am feeling at this time.”
Shakur had been living in Cuba for over 30 years. The step-aunt and godmother of the late rapper Tupac became the first woman to ever make the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list.
While in her 20s, Shakur joined the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s but later left after not agreeing with the direction of the group. She subsequently joined another black militant organization, the Black Liberation Army (BLA).
On the evening of May 2, 1973, Shakur and two BLA colleagues were stopped by two state troopers for a traffic infraction in New Jersey. In the course of the confrontation, Shakur’s friend Zayd Shakur and State Trooper Werner Foerster were killed.
Shakur was accused of Foerster’s murder despite consistently denying the accusation. In 1977, she was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison in a trial that was described as coming from a “kangaroo court.”
Two years later, she escaped with the help of BLA members who posed as visitors to the prison. Shakur was granted asylum by Fidel Castro in 1984.
There was a $2 million federal and state reward for her arrest. Politicians, including the likes of President Donald Trump, have over the years demanded her extradition from Cuba, raising concerns about whether she was still a threat to U.S. security.
People, however, raised doubts about any supposed threats she could pose.
Shakur, who has been mentioned in songs like A Song for Assata and Public Enemy’s Rebel Without A Pause, made news in April 2018 when she was given a check for thousands of dollars by a North Carolina county court due to a land deal.
