As if her precious life and freedom were a game of poker, the FBI upped the ante or bounty on [Assata Shakur] to $1 million two weeks ago. In a television address last Tuesday, Cuban leader Fidel Castro rejected calls to hand over Shakur, stating that she was not a terrorist but a victim of racial persecution. "They wanted to portray her as a terrorist, something that was an injustice, a brutality, an infamous lie," Castro said in his televised speech, while never mentioning Shakur's name. "They have always been hunting her, searching for her because of the fact that there was an accident in which a policeman died."
Shunning warnings that Cuban Pres Fidel Castro was using them for propaganda purposes, eight US residents have taken Castro up on his offer to grant them free medical education, provided they return to poor communities in the US. On Apr 4, 2001, the eight African-American students took part in welcoming ceremonies hosted by Cuba's Latin American School of Medical Sciences.
Ever since [Assata Shakur] (nee Joanne Chesimard) became a member of the Black Panther Party and subsequently a member of the Black Liberation Army, she has been involved in revolutionary activities to change the racist policies of America. She found herself in the crosshairs of the criminal justice system in the early 1970s after she and her comrades were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike by New Jersey State Troopers. Assata was traveling with Zayd Shakur and Sundiata Acoli in May 1973 when they were stopped, the troopers said, because of a faulty tail light on their car. Shortly after the stop, a shootout occurred. "There were lights and sirens," Shakur recalled in her autobiography. "Zayd was dead. My mind knew that Zayd was dead. The air was like cold glass, my mouth tasted like blood and dirt. Suddenly the [car] door flew open and I felt myself being dragged out onto the pavement. Pushed and punched, a foot upside my head, a kick in the stomach. Police were everywhere. One had a gun to my head," she wrote.
Congressman Charles B. Rangel (D-Harlem), who was instrumental in obtaining a license from the U.S. Treasury Department on behalf of the NAACP delegation for the trip to Cuba, hailed the planned trade link with Black farmers. Rangel said he considers the results of the NAACP's Cuba visit "an important breakthrough." Rangel is a longtime advocate of U.S. trade with Cuba, arguing that removal of the U.S. embargo would promote democracy in Cuba.