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Jalil Abdul Muntaqim

Black Liberation Army Political Prisoner

About Jalil Muntaqim

Anthony Bottom/Jalil A. Muntaqim was born October 18, 1951, in Oakland, California, the first of four children in his family. His early years were spent in San Francisco. In his junior high school years he obtained a summer scholarship to attend an advanced high school math and science program; and while in high school he obtained a summer scholarship to attend an advanced college summer math and engineering program. During the civil rights movement, he participated in NAACP youth organizing and was one of many who engaged in street riots against racism and police brutality in San Francisco.

In high school, he became a leading member of the Black Student Union. Because of his ability to articulate the issues that confronted Black students, Jalil often toured San Jose, California, in what was called "speakout" with the BSU Chairman of San Jose State and City College. He had become a member of the "House of Umoja," a cultural-nationalist affiliate of Ron Karenga's United Slaves Organization. At the age of 16 1/2, on April 6, 1968, two nights after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the BSU Chair of San Jose State and City College, Jalil, and a couple of high school students were arrested in a car and charged with possession of high-powered rifles and molotov cocktails. Black high school students picketed and demonstrated in front of San Jose City Hall demanding their release from detention.

After the assassination of Rev. King, Jalil began to believe a more militant response to national oppression and racism was necessary and began to look towards the Black Panthers for Self-Defense for leadership. He became affiliated with the BPP when he was 18 years old. Having moved back to San Francisco from San Jose, Jalil was recruited into the Black underground by elementary school friends who had since become Panthers.

Less than two months from his twentieth birthday, on August 28, 1971, Jalil was captured along with Albert Nuh Washington in a midnight shoot-out with San Francisco police. (It has been alleged that Jalil and Nuh attempted to assassinate a S.F. police sergeant in retaliation for the August 21, 1971 assassination of George Jackson.) Subsequently, Jalil was charged with a host of revolutionary underground activities, including the assassination of NYC police officers for which he is currently serving a life sentence.

When he was arrested in 1971, he was a high school graduate and employed as a social worker for the California State Employment Office. Having been imprisoned since 1971, ... Jalil is one of the ten longest held Black political prisoners in the world.

While imprisoned in San Quentin in 1975-1977, Jalil was able to organize the first national prison petition campaign to the United Nations. He established the first revolutionary prisoners' national newspaper called Arm the Spirit, and wrote some of the first Black political booklets and essays, an unpublished novel and teleplay.

Jalil has a daughter and a granddaughter, he states: "I came to prison an expectant father and will leave prison a grandfather." Jalil will not appear before the parole board in New York State until the year 2002. Jalil also states: "The United States does not recognize the existence of political prisoners. To do so would give credence to the fact of the level of repression and oppression, and have to recognize the fact that people resist racist oppression in the United States, and therefore, legitimize the existence of not only the individuals who are incarcerated or have been captured, but also legitimize those movements of which they are a part."

From Can't Jail the Spirit, 4th edition, March 1998

Jalil is responsible for the National Prisoners' Campaign to Petition the United Nations in 1976 which ultimately resulted in the UN finding that there were political prisoners in the United States. He continues to be active and has been instrumental in the formation of the New Afrikan Liberation Front and the Jericho Amnesty Movement.

See also the New York Three History and Case Background (pdf file) and another profile at Kersplebedeb.

By Jalil Muntaqim

Jalil has contributed much to the analysis of the politics of prisons, including:

"America: Reaps What It Sows?" (January 2002)
Interview with Jason Corwin, reporter for The RNNR (Red Nations Newswire Report), May 2001
On the Black Liberation Army, pamphlet available from Kersplebedeb
"The Cold War of the 90's" in Issue #52 of Prison News Service, Sept. - Oct. 1995.
"The Criminalization of Poverty" is a chapter of Schooling the Generations in the Politics of Prison, edited by Chinosole (Berkeley, CA: New Earth Publications, 1996).
"August 21, 1971 -- 25 Years Later" (solidarity statement)

How you can support Jalil Muntaqim

Write to him; for Jalil's current address, visit the PARC political prisoner listing. He is receiving support from the Jericho Amnesty Movement <www.thejerichomovement.com> and <prisonactivist.org/jericho_sfbay> and from the Anarchist Black Cross Federation.

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This page is maintained by the Prison Activist Resource Center.

February 13, 2005