Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt
Ten years back, a news report came out in America that I hardly could believe.
There on the television screen was Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt speaking about not being able to open a car door in 1997. Indeed, the last time he had been doing that was another era, before the FBI had framed him for murder of a California teacher on a tennis court. “Black Panthers” informants in pay of the FBI tried and failed to stitch him up.
The FBI subsequently coughed up along with the LA city government $4 million dollars in compensation. It’s court system and untold millions of dollars spent (from the time of a moon landing to the Space Shuttle) didn’t dent a rock solid legal defense by Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt.
The Los Angeles Police Department Criminal Conspiracy Section of “Glass House” infamy, too, had been defeated after an imprisonment period longer than Nelson Mandela’s Robben Island jailing. The ex Special Forces Viet Nam veteran was a primary target of California and US government spymasters. He had put FBI COINTELPRO (counterintelligence) back in the public dialogue and the generation of then recently departed Tupac Amaru Shakur (his godson murdered September 1996) took notice of Tupac’s references to living as a child on the run from COINTELPRO.
‘G’ as he was known had for several treacherous late ’60s years been capable of leading the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in Los Angeles in leadership roles, notably surviving a LAPD/FBI/CCS raid just four days after the bloody assassination of Black Panthers officials Mark Clark and Fred Hampton in Chicago. The rupture and infighting plotted by the feds succeeded shortly afterward sending dozens into exile.The police coordinated with the Richard Nixon government to hunt down and assassinate those remnant resisters: Sisters and Brothers considered the greatest security threat in the country. Terror by the state ran some to do Washington DC’s bidding and create what the bosses wanted. Still others assisted and formed more underground forces.
Spending much of his time in Tanzania in East Africa and also his native Louisiana, “G”, born in 1947 is celebrating age 60.
17 October 2007
From Exile,
Bankole
www.geocities.com/exiledone2002
REFERENCES:
1. Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement
2. Assata: An Autobiography (Lawrence Hill & Co.)
3. The Black Panthers - Photographs by Stephen Shames
4. Journey to Justice
Technorati Tags:  Black Panthers |  FBI COINTELPRO |  Assata Shakur |  Johnnie Cochran
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 Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly: One part Kafka and one part Orwell, the story of Geronimo Pratt’s conviction and imprisonment, for a murder committed while he was 350 miles away from the crime scene and under FBI surveillance, is a textbook case of abuse of the American criminal justice system for political ends. Raised in small-town Louisiana, Pratt served two distinguished stints in Vietnam (earning a Purple Heart) before becoming a leader of the Black Panthers in Los Angeles. Visible and articulate, he was targeted by the FBI’s counterintelligence program and soon was set up and convicted for a highly publicized 1968 Santa Monica murder. At trial, where he was represented by the now-famous Johnnie Cochran, evidence was suppressed (and later destroyed), witnesses were intimidated and perjury was suborned. His case became an international cause, but the details of Pratt’s struggles have not, until now, been readily available. Olsen tells Pratt’s story with a compelling narrative grace. Drawing from a mountain of court records and other documentary evidenceAas well as on the memories of Pratt, his family and his lawyers (both Cochran and his young colleague, Stuart Hanlon)AOlsen takes us from the early days of Pratt’s imprisonment, through his appeals, and up to the day when his conviction was finally overturned and he went free. (By then, he’d served more than 26 years in prison, several of them in solitary confinement.) Rigorously researched, skillfully organized and passionately written, the book lays bare long-obscured facts about Pratt’s case, as well as ugly truths about the conditions of prison and a grave miscarriage of justice. From Library Journal: Olsen is a journalist and prolific author who writes in the segmented style of a playwright as he chronicles the life and times of Geronimo Pratt, a former Black Panther Party leader who was spurned by his peers and framed by the authorities for a murder he did not commit. Pratt served 27 years behind bars until a persistent and determined coalition of clergy and lawyers (including the famed Johnnie L. Cochran) was able to dig up enough fresh evidence to spring him. The book focuses on aspects of the Pratt case that are common to the imprisoned innocent: the contamination of secondhand confession testimony and inflated eyewitness identifications, in this case extracted by bad cops and overzealous prosecutors. Added to this mix is the notorious status of the Black Panthers in 1968. As Olsen jumps from scene to scene, the egregious excesses and misinformation campaigns of the FBI, the LAPD, and the district attorney and the federal government’s inter-agency effort to discredit the Black Panther movement become manifest. The book is a classic expos of how an innocent’s rights can be swept under the rug of politics and power. Recommended for public and academic libraries.DPhilip Y. Blue, NY State Supreme Court Criminal Branch Law Lib., New York |
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