Who Is a Prisoner of War? Mutulu Shakur and the Struggle for Black Liberation

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Author's Note

While I am solely responsible for the views presented in this essay, I owe a debt of gratitude to the principled perseverance of Mutulu Shakur and the many attorneys who have represented him, and to the work of many scholars, especially Ward Churchill, Kathleen Cleaver, Lennox Hinds, Chokwe Lumumba, Susan Rosenberg, and Akinyele Umoja.

Notes

1 For background, see Akinyele Umoja, “Straight Ahead: The Life of Resistance of Dr. Mutulu Shakur” (in this issue).

2 See United States v. Shakur, 723 F. Supp. 925 (S.D.N.Y. 1988); 888 F.2d 234 (2d Cir. 1989).

3 United States v. Shakur, 498 F. Supp. 3d 490, 496–497 (S.D.N.Y. 2020).

4 United States v. Shakur, 498 F. Supp. 3d 490, 499 (S.D.N.Y. 2020).

5 United States v. Shakur, 498 F. Supp. 3d 490, 499 (S.D.N.Y. 2020), citing 690 F. Supp. 1291, 1291 (S.D.N.Y 1988).

6 United States v. Shakur, 498 F. Supp. 3d 490, 499 (S.D.N.Y. 2020).

7 mutulushakur.com [visited October 25, 2021]; see also Natasha Lennard, “Eligible for Release in 2016, Mutulu Shakur Remains Behind Bars With Worsening Cancer,” The Intercept, December 2, 2021, https://theintercept.com/2021/12/02/mutulu-shakur-prison-release-cancer/.

8 See generally Sundiata Acoli, “Unique Problems Associated with the Legal Defense of Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War (PP/POWs),” Southern University Law Review 24 (1996): 113–19.

9 See United Nations, Decolonization, https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/decolonization; see generally Samantha Christiansen and Zachary A. Scarlett, eds., The Third World in the Global 1960s (New York: Berghahn Book, 2013); George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 (Boston, MA: South End, 1987). The following sections draw heavily from Natsu Taylor Saito, “Tales of Color and Colonialism: Racial Realism and Settler Colonial Theory,” Florida A&M University Law Review 10, no. 1 (2014): 1–108.

10 See Civil Rights Act of 1964, Pub. L. No. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241, codified at 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000d-2000d-7 (2006); Voting Rights Act of 1965, Pub. L. No. 89-110, 79 Stat. 437, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 1971 (2006); Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (finding segregated public schools to be inherently unequal).

11 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam, 1968).

12 Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture] and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (New York: Random House, 1967), 5.

13 Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture], Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism (New York: Random House, 1971), 201.

14 Deborah Bird Rose, Hidden Histories: Black Stories from Victoria River Downs, Humbert River and Wave Hill Stations (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1991), 46.

15 See generally Natsu Taylor Saito, Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law: Why Structural Racism Persists (New York: New York University Press, 2020).

16 See, e.g., Komozi Woodard, A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 17 (quoting Martin R. Delaney and Frederick Douglass); Civil Rights Congress, We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government against the Negro People (New York: International, 1951).

17 “The Black Panther Party Platform & Program: What We Want, What We Believe,” reprinted in Judith Clavir Albert and Stewart Edward Albert, eds., The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade (New York: Praeger, 1984), 159–64.

18 See Laura Pulido, Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 282–4.

19 Iris Morales and Denise Oliver-Velez, “Foreword: Why Read the Young Lords Today?” in The Young Lords: A Reader, ed. Darrel Enck-Wanzer (New York: New York University Press, 2010), ix–xiv, ix.

20 See Ward Churchill, “American Indian Movement,” in Bruce E. Johansen and Barry M. Pritzker, eds., Encyclopedia of American Indian History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2008), 638–46, 640–2.

21 See [Chokwe’s brief].

22 UN Charter, art. 1, para. 2.

23 G.A. Res. 1514 (XV), U.N. GAOR, 15th Sess., Supp. No. 16, U.N. Doc. A/4684, at 66 (Dec. 14, 1960).

24 Ibid.

25 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), art. 1, Dec. 16, 1966, 999 U.N.T.S. 171; International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), art. 1, Dec. 16, 1966, 999 U.N.T.S. 3.

26 Human Rights Committee, General Comment 12, art. 1, para. 1 (21st Sess., 1984), Compilation of General Comments and General Recommendations Adopted by Human Rights Treaty Bodies, U.N. Doc. HRI/GEN/1/Rev.1 at 12 (1994).

27 East Timor (Portugal v. Australia), 1995 I.C.J. 90, 102, para. 29 (June 30); see also Lee Seshagiri, “Democratic Disobedience: Reconceiving Self-Determination and Secession at International Law,” Harvard International Law Journal 51 (2010): 553–98, 567 (noting that “the classical right of colonial self-determination has acquired jus cogens status”).

28 Howard J. Vogel, “Reframing Rights from the Ground Up: The Contribution of the New U.N. Law of Self-Determination to Recovering the Principle of Sociability on the Way to a Relational Theory of International Human Rights,” Temple International & Comparative Law Journal 20 (2006): 443–97, 447.

29 See Yussuf Naim Kly, International Law and the Black Minority in the U.S., 3d ed. (Atlanta, GA: Clarity, 1985), 124 (noting that the term “peoples,” as a matter of practice, “is becoming generally accepted to include minorities or nationalities”).

30 Reference re Secession of Quebec, 2 S.C.R. 217 (1998) at 70, 76.

31 Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples, Algiers, July 4, 1976, https://www.algerie-tpp.org/tpp/en/declaration_algiers.htm. See also Richard A. Falk, Human Rights and State Sovereignty (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981), 185–94 (providing background), 225–8 (reproducing the Declaration).

32 Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa) notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 (1970), Advisory Opinion, 1971 I.C.J. Reports 16, 63 (declaration of President Muhammad Zafrulla Khan).

33 Ibid., 69 (separate opinion of Vice-President Fouad Ammoun).

34 See Antonio Cassese, Self-Determination of Peoples: A Legal Reappraisal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 54–5. Cassese, it should be noted, does not understand this right to apply to “internal minorities.” Ibid., 62.

35 G.A. Res. 1514, U.N. GAOR, 15th Sess., Supp. No. 16, at 66, U.N. Doc. A/L.323 & Add. 1–6 (1960), preamble, para. 2.

36 See Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, G.A. Res. 2105, U.N. Doc. A/RES/2105 (1965); Programme of Action for the Full Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, G.A. Res. 2621, U.N. Doc. A/8086 (1970); Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, G.A. Res. 2908, U.N. Doc. A/L.677 & Add. 1 (1972); Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, G.A. Res. 33/44, U.N. Doc. A/33/L.16 & Add. 1 (1978).

37 Basic Principles of the Legal Status of the Combatants Struggling Against Colonial and Alien Domination   and Racist Regimes, G.A. Res. 3103, U.N. Doc. A/9030 (1973).

38 Ibid.

39 See, e.g., Importance of the Universal Realization of the Right of Peoples to Self-Determination and of the Speedy Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples for the Effective Guarantee and Observance of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 30/70, U.N. Doc. A/9325 (1973), prin. 2; Importance of the Universal Realization of the Right of Peoples to Self-Determination and of the Speedy Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples for the Effective Guarantee and Observance of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 32/14, U.N. Doc. A/32/318 (1976), prin. 2; Importance of the Universal Realization of the Right of Peoples to Self-Determination and of the Speedy Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples for the Effective Guarantee and Observance of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 33/24, U.N. Doc. A/33/37 (1978), prin. 2; Importance of the Universal Realization of the Right of Peoples to Self-Determination and of the Speedy Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples for the Effective Guarantee and Observance of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 45/130, U.N. Doc. A/RES/45/130 (1990).

40 Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F.2d 774, 795–-796, 806–807 (D.C. Cir. 1984).

41 Ibid., 795, quoting G.A.Res. 3103, 28 U.G. GAOR at 512, U.N. Doc. A/9102 (1973).

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid., 795–6. Congress responded by creating a civil cause of action for damages resulting from what it defined as international terrorism, and distinguishing such from “acts of war,” which encompass armed conflict between “military forces of any origin,” but this did nothing to change the applicable international law. See Antiterrorism Act of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101–519, §132, 104 Stat. 2250, 2250–2253 (amending 18 U.S.C. §§2331–2338 (Sup. II 1991) (definitions at 18 U.S.C. §2331(1) and (4)).

44 Ibid.

45 For background, see Quinn v. Robinson, 783 F.2d 776, 792–793 (9th Cir. 1986).

46 See Ward Churchill, “‘Non-Recognition of the Law Does Not Invalidate It’: The Status of BLA and Provisional IRA Prisoners” (in this issue).

47 House Report 106–488, “The FALN and Macheteros Clemency: Misleading Explanations, a Reckless Decision, a Dangerous Message,” Dec. 10, 1999, text accompanying notes 50–61. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-106hrpt488/html/CRPT-106hrpt488.htm.

48 United States v. Morales, 464 F. Supp. 325 (E.D.N.Y. 1979).

49 Lisa Napoli, “The Puerto Rican Independentistas: Combatants in the Fight for Self-Determination and the Right to Prisoner of War Status,” Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law 4 (1996): 131–88.

50 Jordan J. Paust, “War and Enemy Status after 9/11: Attacks on the Law of War,” Yale Journal of International Law 28 (2003): 325–35, 330.

51 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Aug. 12, 1949, 75 U.N.T.S. 135, https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.32_GC-III-EN.pdf.

52 See Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, S. Exec. Rep. 101–30 at 15 (1990) (report of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, acknowledging that the Geneva Conventions, “to which the United States and virtually all other countries are Parties . . . generally reflect customary international law”); see also Theodore Meron, “The Geneva Conventions as Customary Law,” American Journal of International Law, 81 (1987): 348–70 (noting that many norms embodied in the Conventions were already recognized as customary law); Sigrid Mehring, “Customary Status of International Humanitarian Law,” in First Do No Harm: Medical Ethics in International Humanitarian Law (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2014), 189–235, 190 (noting that “[g]enerally, the Geneva Conventions are considered part of customary international law”).

53 Case Concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States), para. 218, Merits, 1986 I.C.J. Rep. 14 (judgment of June 27).

54 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), of 8 June 1977, art. 1(4).

55 Protocol I, art. 3(b).

56 See International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), “Treaties, States Parties and Commentaries, https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/States.xsp?xp_viewStates=XPages_NORMStatesSign&xp_treatySelected=470 (accessed December 29, 2021).

57 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, art. 5. See also Protocol I, art. 45(1).

58 On the relevant criteria, see Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, art. 4; Protocol I, arts. 43, 44.

59 Protocol I, art. 44(4).

60 William H. Taft, IV, “The Law of Armed Conflict after 9/11: Some Salient Features,” Yale Journal of International Law, 28 (2003): 319–23, 322; see also Sean Watts, “Reciprocity and the Law of War,” Harvard International Law Journal 50 (2008): 365–434, 381 (“Although the United States is not a party to the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, it has supported portions of the Protocols as reflective of customary international law.”).

61 See Gay J. McDougall, “Toward a Meaningful International Regime: The Domestic Relevance of International Efforts to Eliminate All Forms of Racial Discrimination,” Howard Law Journal 40 (1997): 571–95, 571–5; see generally Henry J. Richardson III, The Origins of African-American Interests in International Law (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2008).

62 United States v. Buck, 690 F. Supp. 1291, 1292 (1988). In this opinion, Judge Haight addressed (and dismissed) the claims of both Shakur and his co-defendant Marilyn Buck that their actions constituted political rather than criminal conduct and that Shakur should be considered a prisoner of war.

63 Ibid., 1292–3.

64 See text accompanying note 62 above.

65 Affidavit of Chokwe Lumumba, Oct. 31, 1987, Freedom Archives, https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC513_scans/Mutulu_Shakur/513.mutulu.shakur.vs.us.supreme.district.court.10.31.1987.pdf (accessed 9 September 2022)

66 Ibid., para. 3. For similar analyses, see text accompanying note 62 above.

67 See, e.g., Robert J. Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969) , 2 (“The fact of black America as a semicolony, or what has been termed ‘domestic colonialism,’ . . . [is] the most profound conclusion to be drawn from a survey of the black experience in America.”); Harold Cruse, Rebellion or Revolution (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009 [1968]), 74 (“The Negro has a relationship to the dominant culture of the United States similar to that of colonies and semi-dependents to their particular foreign overseers.”); Ture (Carmichael, 1967), supra note 12. For recent work, see, e.g., Gerald Horne, The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018).

68 Affidavit of Chokwe Lumumba, Oct. 31, 1987, quote at para. 8(b).

69 Ibid., para. 8.

70 Ibid., para. 9.

71 Ibid., paras. 10–18.

72 Ibid., para. 19.

73 Ibid., paras. 20–2.

74 Ibid., paras. 24–5.

75 Ibid., para. 23.

76 Brief of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers as Amicus Curiae in Support of Defendant’s Memorandum in Reply to the Government’s Response to the January 18, 1988 Order of the Hon. Charles S. Haight, n.d. (on file with author).

77 Ibid., 4–5, 6–9.

78 Ibid., 10, 14.

79 Ibid., 14–23.

80 Affidavit of Kerri L. Martin, Mar. 23, 1988, supra note 80, Appendix A.

81 Ibid., 4–5, quoting the final report of the U.S. delegation to the Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts, Fourth Session.

82 Ibid., 10, 12, 14–15.

83 Ibid., 16–17.

84 Ibid., 15.

85 Ibid., 12.

86 See International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), “Treaties, States Parties and Commentaries,” supra note 57.

87 United States v. Buck, 690 F. Supp. 1291 (1988). The government’s responses are attached as an exhibit to the Affidavit of Kerri L. Martin, Mar. 23, 1988, and were prepared by legal advisors to the Department of State, Department of the Army, and Department of Defense (on file with author).

88 See generally Jordan J. Paust, International Law as Law of the United States 2nd ed. (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2003).

89 United States v. Shakur, 498 F Supp. 3d 490, 500 (S.D.N.Y. 2020).

90 United States v. Buck, 690 F. Supp. 1291, 1296 (1988).

91 Reparations for Injuries Suffered in the Service of the United Nations, Advisory Opinion, 1949 I.C.J. Rep. 174 (Apr. 11).

92 Lisa Napoli, “The Puerto Rican Independentistas: Combatants in the Fight for Self-Determination and the Right to Prisoner of War Status,” Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law 4 (1996): 131–88, 147–8; see also Christopher O. Quaye, Liberation Struggles in International Law (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991), 281.

93 Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (New York: International Publishers, 1965), 258.

94 See Marcus Rediker, Cassandra Pybus and Emma Christopher., “Introduction,” in Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World, ed. Emma Christopher, Cassandra Pybus and Marcus Rediker (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 1–19, 8; Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 2011[1972]), 96–8. See generally Joseph Inikori and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992); Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1998).

95 On the Constitution’s safeguarding of chattel slavery see Paul Finkelman, “A Covenant with Death: Slavery and the Constitution,” American Visions, May–June 1968, 21–27; on its role in U.S. economic development, see Vincent Harding, There is a River: the Black Struggle for Freedom in America (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 8; see generally Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014).

96 See UN resolutions referenced in notes 31, 35, 36, 37 above.

97 Namibia case, Separate Opinion of Vice-President Ammoun, at 56. https://www.icj-cij.org/public/files/case-related/53/053-19710621-ADV-01-02-EN.pdf.

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Natsu Taylor Saito

Natsu Taylor Saito is a Regents Professor and professor of law at Georgia State University’s College of Law in Atlanta, Georgia, where she teaches courses on international law and human rights, race and ethnicity, and Indigenous rights. She has published several dozen law review articles as well as three books, most recently Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law: Why Structural Racism Persists (NYU Press, 2020).