![\"Assata](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/gettyimages-97264177.jpg\")
<\/p>\n Havana
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n Assata Shakur, the Black Liberation Army member and fugitive with a $2 million FBI reward on her head, died in Havana where she had received political asylum from Fidel Castro, the Cuban Foreign Ministry announced Friday.\n <\/p>\n
\n According to the short announcement, Shakur, who was also known as Joanne Chesimard, died Thursday from \u201chealth ailments and her advanced age.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Shakur, who was also the godmother and step-aunt of slain rapper Tupac Shakur, was 78 years old.\n <\/p>\n
\n An outspoken proponent of armed revolution in the United States, Shakur was convicted for her role in a 1973 shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that killed a state trooper. Shakur was herself wounded in the exchange of gunfire and claimed that the FBI had targeted her for assassination as part of a widespread campaign against black militant organizations in the 1960s and 70s.\n <\/p>\n
\n While serving a life sentence for the murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster, Shakur escaped prison in New Jersey in 1979 and began her life on the run.\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n She resurfaced in 1984 in Cuba where then Cuban leader Fidel Castro awarded her political asylum. While living in Cuba, Shakur wrote books, appeared in a documentary and mocked US efforts to force her extradition.\n <\/p>\n
\n In 2013 the FBI made Shakur the first woman on its most wanted terrorists list and, with the state of New Jersey Attorney, increased the reward for her capture to $2 million.\n <\/p>\n
\n Her asylum on the communist-run island among a handful of other US fugitives from justice provided fodder for anti-Castro activists who argued that Cuba should be remain on the US State Department list of countries that sponsor state terrorism.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Havana \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Assata Shakur, the Black Liberation Army member and fugitive with a $2 million FBI reward on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":256708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[50,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-256707","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115272002132916951","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}