On August 22, the Partisan Defense Committee sent the following letter of protest to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

The Partisan Defense Committee protests the “anti-terrorism” prosecution of the “Newburgh Four.” James Cromitie, David Williams, Laguerre Payen and Onta Williams, black residents of Newburgh, New York, are the victims of a classic entrapment scam—a hallmark of the FBI’s post–September 11 “war on terrorism.” These prosecutions set up individuals, predominantly Muslim and often black, who are overheard voicing grievances with the rampant and official racism and xenophobia that pervades this society. (read more...)

The Partisan Defense Committee protests the prosecution and imprisonment of Walter Kendall Myers and his wife Gwendolyn Myers. A retired State Department analyst, Mr. Myers pleaded guilty last November to charges of conspiracy to commit espionage. Gwendolyn Myers pleaded guilty to conspiring to gather and transmit defense information to Cuba, which has been under the gun sights of U.S. imperialism since capitalist class rule was overthrown some 50 years ago. At their sentencing on July 16, Walter Myers forthrightly announced, “We did not intend to hurt any individual American. Our only objective was to help the Cuban people defend their revolution.” United States District Judge Reggie Walton vindictively sentenced 73-year-old Walter Myers to life without parole, and the 72-year-old Gwendolyn Myers to 81 months. This could well be a death sentence for Gwendolyn Myers, who has already suffered a heart attack since her June 2009 arrest.

From the interests of the working class and oppressed in the U.S. and around the world, what the Myers are accused of is not a crime. We defend them as part of our defense of Cuba, a bureaucratically deformed workers state. We demand their immediate freedom. (read more...)

Lynne Stewart was resentenced to ten years in prison on July 15 for zealously defending her client, a blind Egyptian cleric imprisoned for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. U.S. District Court judge Koeltl’s decision to more than quadruple Stewart’s original sentence of 28 months is a loud affirmation by the Obama administration that there will be no let-up in the massive attacks on democratic rights under the “war on terror.”

Stewart, her interpreter Mohamed Yousry and paralegal Ahmed Abdel Sattar were convicted in February 2005 of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government. Abdel Sattar was also convicted of conspiracy to “kill and kidnap persons in a foreign country.” What constituted “material support” was Stewart’s statement to a Reuters reporter that her client urged his Egyptian supporters in the Islamic Group to reconsider their cease-fire with the Mubarak dictatorship. As we wrote in opposing the conviction of Stewart, Yousry and Abdel Sattar: “The verdict gives the government a green light to prosecute lawyers for the alleged crimes of their clients, thereby shooting the basic right to counsel to hell…. And if nobody can get a lawyer to zealously defend him from prosecution, then fundamental liberties, from the right to a trial and an attorney, to even the right of free speech and assembly, are choked” (WV No. 842, 18 February 2005). (read more...)

The Partisan Defense Committee—the legal and social defense organization associated with the Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste—denounces in the strongest terms the brutal police violence unleashed on protesters against the G20 summit in Toronto on June 26-27. Over 900 have been arrested, including many protest organizers. We demand the immediate release of all protesters. Drop all the charges now!

Toronto became a virtual police state as 20,000 cops descended on the city. Following a 15,000-strong demonstration against the G20 on June 26, riot police began rounding up protesters and passers-by in indiscriminate sweeps throughout the city core. The cops have employed deadly force, using tear gas, muzzle blast [of tear gas], rubber bullets and pepper spray, and serious injuries have been reported. Journalists have been arrested in a clear effort to prevent exposure of the cop violence. (read more...)

We print below an April 8 letter to the Partisan Defense Committee from Tom Manning. Manning and Jaan Laaman are the last two members of the Ohio 7 still in prison and are recipients of the PDC class-war prisoner stipend program. The Ohio 7 were members of the United Freedom Front, a radical group that took credit for bombings that targeted symbols of U.S. imperialism, including military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s (see “Ohio 7: Fighters Against Imperialism, Racism,” WV No. 741, 8 September 2000). The PDC has long defended the Ohio 7, including during a 1989 trial on trumped-up “seditious conspiracy” charges. From the standpoint of the working class, their actions against U.S. imperialism and racist injustice were not crimes, and these courageous activists should not have served a day in prison. (read more...)

The following May 10 protest letter was sent by the Partisan Defense Committee to Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole chairman Catherine C. McVey.

The Partisan Defense Committee once again joins with those supporting the release of the eight surviving political prisoners who have been collectively known as the MOVE 9. These men and women were victims of racist police brutality. They are innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted and imprisoned for over three decades. (read more...)

On January 19, the U.S. Supreme Court took a clear step toward the legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Court vacated a 2001 decision by federal district court judge William Yohn overturning Mumia’s death sentence. Yohn’s decision had been previously upheld by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The new ruling by the Supreme Court underscores our insistence that fighters for Mumia’s freedom must place no faith in the courts, which, at every level, have colluded with the police and prosecutors to see through the execution of this innocent man.

Mumia was targeted by the police and FBI in his teenage years as a Black Panther leader and later as a journalist and MOVE supporter renowned for his searing exposés of cop brutality and racist oppression. In a blatantly racist and political frame-up, Mumia was railroaded to death row in 1982 on false charges of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Without a shred of actual evidence against him, he was convicted on the basis of phony ballistics and other manufactured “evidence,” a “confession” concocted by cops and prosecutors, massive police intimidation of witnesses and racist jury rigging. His trial was overseen by “hanging judge” Albert Sabo, who was overheard saying he would help the prosecution “fry the n----r.” To secure the death sentence, prosecutors pointed to political statements issued by Mumia as a 16-year-old Panther. (read more...)