A resource guide to political prisoners in the U.S.

Alvaro Luna Hernandez (born May 12, 1952) is a Chicano liberation and prison abolition activist from Alpine, Texas. He is currently serving a 50-year sentence for aggravated assault of a police officer. He is housed in solitary confinement at James V. Allred Unit prison in Iowa Park, Texas where he was transferred after being incarcerated 18 years at Hughes Unit. He spends his time as “Jailhouse Lawyer”, also known as an amateur attorney, assisting indigent inmates he believes to be innocent or deserving in their pursuit of justice.

In the 1990s, Xinachtli worked as the national coordinator of the Ricardo Aldape Guerra Defense Committee, which led the successful struggle to free Mexican national Aldape Guerra from Texas’ death row after being framed by Houston police for allegedly killing a cop. In 1993, he was a non-governmental organization (NGO) delegate before the 49th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. Before the U.N. General Assembly, he vociferously exposed and condemned the U.S. government’s dismal human rights record and its human rights violations of U.S. political prisoners.

In the end, he was convicted of “threatening” the sheriff, but acquitted on the charge of shooting Sgt. Hines in the hand. The mostly-white jury explained that they would have “disgraced” the police and sent the “wrong message” to others that it is justified under law to defend oneself against the armed violence of the state. In a town where the police have ruled Raza barrios with an iron fist, and with someone such as Xinachtli who the police admitted on the stand was a “troublemaker” and someone they all hated, many believe the climate in Texas pressured the jury to charge Xinachtli with threatening a sheriff instead of acquitting him of that charge as well. It also explains the extreme sentence of 50 years handed down by the judge.

Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, born and raised in Compton, California, joined the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party in early 1969 as a teenager who had just been released from the California Youth Authority. He is currently serving 2 life sentences for the frame up of the murder of a security guard and attempted murder of a CHP officer.

Chip has a chance of release because of changes in California parole law. Currently, people over the age of 65 who have served 25 years or more are prioritized for release. The seriousness of the original offense is no longer enough to deny parole–“some evidence” of current dangerousness is required. And Chip’s age at the time of his arrest–just 19–is a factor to be considered at his hearing. Chip has also suffered from a stroke, and has had few incident reports. Chip has been represented in the past by prisoner rights attorney Charles Carbone.

Michael “Rattler” Markus

Oglala Lakota tribal member Michael Markus (Rattler) was charged alongside 5 indigenous water protectors that aided others in the resistance camps engaging in nonviolent direct action to stop the desecration and construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) near the Standing Rock reservation in the years 2016-2017.

On September 27, 2018, Chief Judge Daniel Hovland sentenced Rattler to 36 months pursuant to a non-cooperating plea agreement previously accepted by the court on February 13, 2018. Under the agreement, the Use of Fire to Commit a Federal Felony Offense charge was dismissed and prosecutors and defense jointly recommended a sentence of three years in prison for the Civil Disorder charge. Rattler self-surrendered to the Bureau of Prisons on November 26, 2018, and was placed in FCI Sandstone in Minnesota.

To learn more about Rattler and how to support him, please visit his Support Committee website here. Supporters can make a financial contribution directly to Rattler here. You can also make a financial contribution to the legal defense for Rattler and the other Water Protectors facing federal charges here.

Matthew DeHart

Matt is a former U.S. Air National Guard drone team member and alleged WikiLeaks courier who worked with the hactivist group Anonymous. After becoming the subject of a national security investigation–and allegations relating to a teenage pornography case which he vehemently denies–he fled from the United States to Canada with his family to seek political asylum and protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. In what represents a moral victory for the DeHart family, the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board judge found that the teenage pornography case against Matt lacked credibility. However, because the IRB considered that the United States still had a functioning democracy, they denied his claim, and on 1 March, 2015 Matt DeHart was handed over into U.S. federal custody.

In 2016, he was sentenced to seven and a half years in jail today in Nashville, TN, in accordance with the plea deal he was coerced into the previous year after being threatened with up to 50 years in prison. Matt has already served three and a half years in prison. He plead guilty to receiving teen ‘pornography,’ consisting of messages dated from 2008 that the U.S. government decided to charge years later. The charging decision only came after the government became aware that Matt was a WikiLeaks and Anonymous supporter, and that Matt had discovered sensitive military files, allegedly destined for WikiLeaks, had been uploaded to a server he ran. In addition to prison time, Matt will be subject to thirteen years of post-release supervision, with likely restrictions on his computer access

Kamau Sadiki

Kamau Sadiki is a former member of the Black Panther Party. At the age of 17 he dedicated his life to the service of his people. He worked out of the Jamaica, Queens office of the Black Panther Party. Having internalized the 10 Point Program and Platform, the 3 Main Rules of Discipline and 8 Points of Attention, Kamau used his knowledge to guide his organizing efforts within the Black Community.

Kamau worked in the Free Breakfast Program, getting up every morning, going to his designated assignment and cooking and feeding hungry children before they went to school. When the Free Breakfast Program was over for the day, he reported to the office, gathered his papers and received his assignment for the day, and went out into the community to sell his papers.

On November 10, 2003, Judge Stephanie Manis sentenced Kamau Sadiki to life imprisonment for murder and ten (10) years to run consecutively for armed robbery after a Fulton County Superior Court jury found him guilty for the murder of Atlanta Police Officer James Green on November 3, 1971.

At the time of the murder, nineteen year old Kamau Sadiki was a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) which was led by John Thomas. Several members of the BLA, including Mr. Sadiki, left New York City and lived in the Atlanta area for a short period of time.  On the night of the murder, two witnesses observed three black males run from a van where Officer Green sat at a gas station in downtown Atlanta. The witnesses failed to identify Mr. Sadiki from a photographic line-up. There was no physical evidence that implicated Mr. Sadiki.  In 1971, the Atlanta police department closed the case as unsolved.

The NATO 3

Brian Church, Jared Chase, and Brent Betterly, are the so-called “NATO 3.” According to prosecutors, the three are self-proclaimed anarchists and members of “Black Bloc,” a band of protesters who typically mask their faces to avoid identification. They were arrested prior to the start of the 2012 NATO summit in Chicago.

After a two-week trial and nearly 8 hours of deliberations, jurors Feb. 7, 2014, rejected the two most serious counts of the indictment–providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy to commit terrorism. Instead, they convicted the three of two counts of misdemeanor mob action and two felony counts of possessing an incendiary device. They acquitted them on two other counts of possessing an incendiary device and one count of solicitation of arson.

The felony convictions carried the potential for prison sentences ranging from four to 30 years. On April 25, Jared Chase was sentenced to 8 years, Betterly to 6 years and Church to 5 years.

Ramsey Muñiz

Ramiro “Ramsey” Muñiz, a former athlete, graduate of Baylor Law School, and attorney, defended civil and human rights during the Civil Rights Movement. He ran for governor of Texas in 1972 and 1974, and his political efforts brought positive advancements for Mexican Americans, Chicanos, and Hispanics. He suffered for it. He is serving a sentence of life without parole.

As a Chicano activist he ran for governor of Texas in 1972 and 1974 as the La Raza Unida Party candidate. La Raza Unida is a political party most active in the Southwest in the 1970s that focused on working class issues and Chicano nationalism. Members faced repression for posing a serious threat to the two-party status-quo. Muñiz faced two drug-related charges and pled guilty before the three-strikes law was implemented. In 1994, he went to prison for life for his “third-strike.” Muñiz and his supporters maintain that the charge that sent him to prison for life was a frame-up.

For years congressmen, leaders, and people of conscience have written to the Director of the Bureau of Prisons asking that he approve the Petition for Compassionate Release submitted by Ramsey Muñiz, and grant his immediate freedom. Muñiz meets the criteria based on his age and chronic medical conditions.

Fred “Muhammad” Burton

Fred Burton is one of the Philly 5 a group of men accused of an alleged attack on a police unit that left one officer killed. The case stems from a highly racially charged period in Philadelphia history while the infamous Frank Rizzo served as Police Commissioner.

Prior to his incarceration, Fred worked for a phone company, was a well-respected member of his community and his wife was preparing to have twins, his third and fourth child.

In 1970, Fred was accused and then convicted of participating in the planning of the murder of Philadelphia police officers. While the plan was allegedly to blow up a police station, what occurred was that a police officer was shot and killed allegedly by members of a radical group called “the Revolutionaries.”

David Gilbert

David Gilbert

American radical organizer, author and prisoner David Gilbert was a founding member of Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society and member of The Weather Underground organization. Following ten years underground he was arrested with members of the Black Liberation Army and other radicals following a botched armored car robbery in 1981. He is now a well-known prisoner serving time in upstate New York.

David Gilbert grew up in a Jewish family in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. Inspired in his teens by the Greensboro sit-ins and other events of the American Civil Rights Movement, he joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) at age seventeen. He entered Columbia University in 1962. In his junior year he helped to found the Independent Committee Against the War in Vietnam [ICV] and later the school’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. He travelled regularly to Harlem while working as a tutor, and saw Malcolm X speak at Barnard College in February 1965, experiences he describes as formative. Known by the late ’60s primarily as a young theorist, publishing articles in New Left Notes and other movement publications, he went on to play an organizing role in the April-May 1968 Columbia student strike.

Jaan Laaman

Jaan Karl Laaman (born 1948) is an American political activist convicted of various charges, including a 1982 attempted murder of a police officer. He was a member of the United Freedom Front. Laaman has been locked in Federal prisons since 1986.

Laaman grew up in Roxbury, Massachusetts and Buffalo, New York. His family emigrated to the United States from Estonia when he was a child. He has a son. He is currently serving a 53-year prison sentence for his role in the bombings of United States government buildings while a member of the United Freedom Front, an American leftist group in the 1980s. Laaman was sentenced for breaking and entering in New York and was sent to prison.

He was a member of the United Freedom Front, an underground leftist group that bombed government and corporate buildings in the 1970s, funding their tactics through bank expropriations. They strongly opposed South African apartheid and U.S. imperialism in Central American. Laaman writes and edits for the 4struggle magazine. Arrested with Laaman was Tom Manning who died in August, 2019.