Mumia transferred to general population

Mumia Abu-Jamal

After more than 30 years in the chambers of death, political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal has been released into the general prison population. Finally, as of Jan. 27, he is now able to embrace his loved ones and shake the hands of all those who have supported him in the struggle for freedom.

In a short message sent to his spouse, Wadiya Jamal, Mumia said: “My dear friends, brothers and sisters — I want to thank you for your real hard work and support. I am no longer on death row, no longer in the hole, I’m in population. This is only part one and I thank you all for the work you’ve done. But the struggle is for freedom!”

On Dec. 7, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced that he had abandoned pursuing the death sentence for Mumia after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the DA’s appeal to reinstate Mumia’s death sentence. On Dec. 9, a standing-room-only event at the Philadelphia Convention Center drew an unprecedented number of people, young and old, especially from the city, to demand his freedom.

Days later, Abu-Jamal was transferred from the infamous SCI Greene to the supposedly less restrictive prison, SCI Mahanoy, just 100 miles from his hometown of Philadelphia. But what should have been an automatic transfer into general population turned into a yet more restrictive and cruel environment.

For seven long weeks, Mumia was held in solitary confinement or “the hole,” with no access to news, bright lights on all the time, wrists and ankles shackled when he was out of his cell and many more conditions far more severe than the ones on death row.

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Source: Workers World, Feb. 2, 2012

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