By Jeff (Free) Luers*

“I am not a martyr and I am not a hero. I don’t fit some perfect archetype, and I can’t live up to any ideal of what so many people think I am. I’m just a man who loves without being able to say the words and who cries without being able to shed tears. I chose this life. I chose the possibility of prison. I chose to forsake my personal life for that which I believed in. It was not out of any altruistic or self-sacrificing desire. I chose this life because I don’t think I could live with myself if I did not.”

I wrote those words on June 3, 2004, in my regular dispatch from the Oregon State Penitentiary, the state’s oldest and only maximum-security prison. About a week later the world would witness the first June 11 International Day of Solidarity with Jeffrey “Free” Luers and Earth Liberation Prisoners. That year June 11 made national headlines because the FBI graciously released a public safety bulletin warning that car dealerships and other business may be targeted by environmental radicals and anarchists. We are currently heading into the 22^nd annual Day in Solidarity with Earth Liberation & Anarchist Prisoners!

By June 11, 2006, the sixth anniversary of my imprisonment, 43 cities around the world held events including Eugene, Oregon (where I lived) and Moscow, Russia where brave, black- clad anarchists spray painted the US Embassy in broad daylight with giant letters demanding my release before dispersing into the crowd.

But the truth is that June 11 started with a small group of friends trying to support a friend they lost to prison and ran a campaign to seek my release. Afterall what are politics if not personal? We struggle because it is personal when your freedom is taken and your world is burning. And when you lose a loved one to the struggle it gets even more personal than you can imagine.

As I sat behind those bars my thoughts were often with those I left behind. The struggle was ever present, that part was easy, the State always made sure of that. To me, it was easy to resist oppression or at least find the desire to do so. It is much harder to endure being separated from your family, your friends, and your community.

And that is why June 11 is so important. I chose to act on my own when I set fire to 3 vehicles at a car dealership. Did I make the right choices? Well, that’s a different conversation, but as a young man sitting in a prison cell, I never expected anything of my community. But my community had an entirely different plan, and it changed the course of my life and I am eternally grateful.

For more than half of my imprisonment, June 11 stood out as an international announcement: We have not forgotten, we will not forget, and we will resist until all are free! Free Free! Became a rallying cry against the excessive, politically biased sentence imposed on me by the judge—the longest sentence of any environmental activist in the U.S. at the time.

I was not the only one that heard that message. My family heard it, my loved ones heard it, and the State heard it because my community around the world was shouting it at the top of their lungs!

In 2007, the Oregon Court of Appeal ruled my sentence illegal, and ordered the lower court to revisit my sentence in a manner consistent with the law. However, if it were not for the public support I had, I do not believe I would have had my sentence reduced by more than half at my resentencing. Moreover, at the resentencing hearing, I do not believe that the prosecutor assigned to my case, Erik Hassleman, would have compared my actions to that of the Boston Tea Party in court if it were not for the actions of thousands upon thousands around the world doing the same thing.

In 2011, after my release from prison, I helped transition June 11 to predominately support for Eric McDavid and Marius Mason (who we welcome home with arms wide open). Yet, it is a special kind of curse to pass the baton of prison solidarity– but if other liberation activists are caught by the state and imprisoned, I wish every one of our prisoners receive the support I did. I pray that whoever is next is strong and courageous because our journey is arduous and full of peril, but we come home. We come home! And as long as you are not a snitch, you are welcomed by the movement with love and support.

On this June 11 International Day of Solidarity with Earth Liberation Prisoners and Anarchist Prisoners we welcome home Marius Mason. And reflect on the lessons learned over all the years.

It takes one person to commit an action, it takes a small group of people to support that person, it takes a community to stand up for that person, and a movement to inspire a world to fight back. The moral of the story is that no matter how painful the journey, under the right circumstances one person can change the world.

*Jeff Luers was sentenced to 22 years and 8 months in state prison for a June, 2000 arson motivated by climate and environmental concerns.  Luers appealed the sentence with the help of CLDC and in 2007 the Court of Appeals overturned his sentence and he was resentenced to a term of 10 years.

Malik Muhammad’s attorney believes they were transferred for helping other incarcerated people advocate for their legal rights.

Jessica Washington, The Intercept.
June 8 2026

Malik Muhammad shown in an undated photo taken from his blog, which is maintained by a support group. Photo: Courtesy of Malik Muhammad support group

Incarcerated activist Malik Muhammad’s standing client call in March with their lawyer had been canceled without any real explanation. When Muhammad’s attorney, Lauren Regan, went to check their status on the Oregon Inmate Tracker, she found nothing. They seemed to have vanished without a trace. 

Friends and family feared the worst. Muhammad, an army veteran and activist serving the longest federal sentence of any 2020 Black Lives Matter protester, had been a target inside the state prison because of their outspoken political beliefs and organizing efforts while incarcerated, several of their friends and supporters told The Intercept. 

“We were calling everyone,” said Christopher Kuttruff, a close friend and supporter. “We were terrified that they were in the hospital or dead …your mind obviously goes to the worst places.”

For weeks, the activist disappeared from all tracking systems. The best Muhammad’s supporters could ascertain by early April was that they had been transferred to a “confidential location.” Late that month, Muhammad was able to get a letter out to their partner from Kirkland Correctional Institute, in South Carolina, an intake facility 3,000 thousand miles from Oregon — or, as Regan puts it, “as far away from me as possible.”

Muhammad described the conditions at Kirkland as deplorable, claiming that incarcerated people are denied access to enough water, food, and recreation, and are forced to sleep on mats on the floor, which sometimes get confiscated as punishment.

The South Carolina Department of Corrections had little to say of Muhammad. In mid-May, the state’s prison system told The Intercept they had no record of someone named Malik Muhammad anywhere in their custody; the prison system did not respond to a follow-up query in June. The activist had become a living ghost within the carceral system. 

Even now, friends and family struggle to reach Muhammad, with only the occasional letter or call to the few people approved to contact them serving as proof of life. 

Because she is not licensed in South Carolina, Regan said she has “not been able to speak on the phone or in person in an attorney-client privileged manner since their transfer,” seriously impeding her ability to represent her client. She had to hire a local attorney to speak with them in person and collect potential evidence.

Millions of people flow through the U.S. prison system every year. And every year, an untold number of them vanish off the map, lost in a massive system that is legally obligated to watch over them. In New Mexico, Stephen Slevin spent nearly two years in solitary confinement in county jail after county officials appear to have simply forgotten about him after charging him with driving under the influence. Slevin never saw a judge or a lawyer and had to pull his own tooth due to consistent medical neglect.

Wanda Bertram, communications strategist for the Prison Policy Initiative, said that people getting lost in the prison system is “pretty common,” even when they haven’t moved as far away as Muhammad. “There’s never any effort made by prisons to tell incarcerated people’s families, ‘Hey, we’re moving this person,’” said Bertram.

As the Trump administration ramps up its use of incarceration as a method of immigration enforcement, concerns are mounting about the already stretched system’s ability to keep track of the people within its care — and the opportunity such lapses in oversight create for authorities to target activists and dissenters adversarial to the government.

“Not only is [Malik] intelligent,” said Regan, a founder and director of litigation and advocacy at the Civil Liberties Defense Center, “but Malik is Black, Muslim, an anarchist, [and] a political activist, and they have targeted Malik as a result of all of those things.”

Muhammad, who was arrested in October 2020, received the harshest sentence out of the hundreds of protesters hit with federal charges in the wake of the 2020 summer protests for racial justice. After tens of thousands were arrested in some of the largest mass arrests in history, many were released without charges or saw their cases dropped, but some prosecutors pushed for harsh sentences and elevated state or local infractions to the federal level, arguing that rioters were masquerading as protesters.

Muhammad pleaded guilty to both state and federal charges, including two counts of “unlawful possession of a destructive device,” for throwing a Molotov cocktail during a protest in East Portland. In 2022, the then-25-year-old was sentenced to 10 years in state prison.

Their plea agreement specifically stated that they would serve their time in Oregon state prison, near their supporters and community. Regan says that Oregon’s prison system has reneged on the agreement — illegally transferring Muhammad interstate as retaliation for their activism while incarcerated — in another attempt by the criminal legal system to punish Muhammad for their organizing.

“Normally, they would have been sentenced to the federal prison system,” said Regan. However, “because their friends and family and supporters at the time were based in Oregon, they explicitly negotiated an outcome that ensured that they would remain in Oregon.” 

Federal prisons tend to be “better,” said Regan, because they often have more funding, allow for more freedom of movement, and have marginally better food. Put it this way, she said, “generally speaking, if you had a choice between Oregon State Prison or Federal Prison, most people would choose [federal].” But instead of relative comfort, Muhammad chose community.

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Prisons are essentially a “black box” where people can disappear into solitary confinement or be transferred without their family’s knowledge, according to Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative. 

“There’s so many constant questions that you live with as the loved one of an incarcerated person, and then when that person suddenly disappears, it’s terrifying,” said Bertram.

To make matters worse, she said, “prisons have a kind of nasty habit of not telling the family when someone dies or is transferred to an outside hospital, or needs emergency care,” compounding concerns for people who cannot locate their loved ones on the inside.

In Regan’s view, there are “a number of reasons” to characterize Muhammad’s transfer as retaliatory. For starters, she said this is part of a pattern of behavior from the Oregon prison system. In 2024, The Intercept reported that Muhammad had been effectively held in solitary confinement, which in Oregon is called “special housing,” for more than 250 days — despite the fact that Oregon limits the use of this type of confinement to 90 days.

She said Muhammad had met people in prison, many who’d been through excessive solitary, and suggested that they could become potential plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit her organization is seeking to file against the state prison system. “The prison is, of course, retaliating against them for basically assisting a nonprofit legal organization in bringing a giant lawsuit about the abuses of solitary confinement in the Oregon prison system,” Regan said. 

Oregon flatly denies sending Muhammad to South Carolina as retaliation.

“These decisions are not made lightly and require a thorough review process conducted by all parties. In the case of Mr. Muhammed [sic], there is extensive background for the reasons [they were] a candidate for an Interstate Compact,” Amber Campbell, communications manager at the public affairs division for the Oregon Department of Corrections, wrote in a statement to The Intercept. 

Muhammad’s advocacy and community building inside have consistently put a target on their back, said Jeremy, a close friend and pen pal. Friends described Muhammad as “empathetic,” “generous,” and “passionate,” as eager to sing for their cellmates as they are to share a book on political theory. 

Now, Muhammad’s friends and family have to sit and wait, and hope the prison system won’t lose them all over again. 

https://www.freebirdbooks.com/shop.html

June 2026 Books Through Bars’ Pride Month book drive

2026 marks the 30th anniversary of Books Through Bars NYC, and while we will celebrate that milestone throughout the rest of the year, we return with our book bundle program to help support their mission. For $30 (aptly for 30 years!) we will purchase a variety of LGBTBQ+ titles.

Please help us stock up on LGBTQ+ titles in their anniversary year.

$30 purchases an assortment of three titles*
Order at https://www.freebirdbooks.com/shop.html

After a few months off from promoting book bundles (the last almanac campaign yielded 500 copies!), we are back to mark our 30th anniversary and efforts to provide the incarcerated with reading material–against a backdrop ever more stringent restrictions.

For June 2026 we reprise our Pride promotion with a variety pack of LGBTQ+ related titles. Your $30 will allow us to purchase three copies from a list narrowed down by Books Through Bars, including works of fiction (genre and literary), memoirs, humor, history, and even adult coloring books.

While donations of used books in this category continue to be dropped off at the store (and please keep them coming), prisons are establishing higher thresholds for the condition and wear-and-tear of the copies. These unstained, undog-eared editions will help guarantee their delivery to incarcerated readers.

Over 25,000 books to date purchased on behalf of NYC Books Through Bars

Since Freebird Books began this drive in June of 2020 in reaction to the COVID-19 quarantine (which shut down volunteer sessions and in-person drop offs at the store), NYC Books Through Bars has been able to keep up with the steady demand from incarcerated readers across the country. Between 200 and 300 packages per week are typically sent out.

This monthly program helps fulfill requests in categories we might be understocked in at a given time. Your generosity has helped us collect books for incarcerated, including 5,000 works on social and criminal justice, history, and ethnic studies, 3,500 novels, 2,000 graphic fiction and manga books, 2,500 dictionaries, 1,500 art appreciation and instruction guides, and now 2,000 almanacs

THEY TRIED TO BURY US ALIVE, NOT KNOWING WE WERE SEEDS….
-ANAHUAC WARRIOR, MEXICO AZTLAN, 1519

FRATERNAL REVOLUTIONARY GREETINGS IN STRUGGLE, FROM WITHIN THE TOMBS AND STEEL CAGES OF THE NEOCOLONIAL MILITARY SUPERMAX CONTROL UNIT GULAG OF THE IMPERIALIST BEAST !!!

You have probably heard of the serious medical issues that afflicted me by the genocidal design of my captors stemming from 24 consecutive years in solitary confinement, malnutrition, constant harassment by the pigs, no recreation or exercise, social isolation, censorship of my revolutionary writings, and a pattern of systemic genocidal torture and brutal repression designed to break my will and my spirit of resistance. I had a stroke in November 2025, at the McConnell Unit in Beeville. Before then, I had been struggling to get medical attention for a series of maladies I had developed as my physical and mental health began deteriorating, namely, bladder infections, neuropathy, B 12 vitamin deficiency, among other disabilities, all ignored by the prison.

On these issues. I have been going back and forth to the main Galveston prison hospital, to the Carole Young Medical facility for surgery and a series of tests and so forth. I am now at the Estelle medical unit (E2) in Huntsville, Texas awaiting to, again, be transferred to Galveston for the testing ordered since December 2025, delayed time and again, under a policy that when the prison is on “routine lockdown” for cellblock searches for contraband, all prior medical appointments are cancelled. For example, I had a scheduled test in Galveston for May 12 but on May 11 the unit went on lockdown, and all doctor’s appointments are cancelled. The unit warden runs this plantation-like gulag like his own kingdom. For more updates on my situation, please visit Instagram.com/freexinachtlinow, or at wwwfreealvaro.net.

My Xinachtli Freedom Campaign (XFC) in Houston has done, and continues to do, an excellent job in reaching out to others, building membership, staying in touch, holding forums, workshops, producing outreach materials such as T-shirts, posters, publishing my revolutionary writings, essays, etcetera, and coalescing the liberation movement of colonized, oppressed communities of Black, Chicano, Indigenous First Nations and supporting each other. My XFC meets every two weeks, online to discuss themes on our agenda and to hold revolutionary co-education discussions on fortifying the campaign and creating a core of cadres who are being trained as community organizers, LINKING THE POLITICAL PRISONERS STRUGGLES/MOVEMENT, WITH COMMUNITY STRUGGLES AS ONE AND THE SAME. I always refer to THE JERICHO MOVEMENT and the ZAPATISTA EXPERIENCES on all matters of community organization, and autonomy, including GLOBALIZATION OF OUR REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION AND FREEDOM FROM NEOCOLONIALISM, IMPERIALISM AND FASCISM.

Just wanted to share these updates with all of the members of JERICHO, and to thank you for your continued support and solidarity. My current attorneys SANDRA C. FREEMAN, and DUSTIN MCDANIEL (former!y with the ABOLITIONIST LAW CENTER, Philly) have filed suit in federal court in Galveston on my behalf on the issues of denial of adequate medical care, prolonged solitary, which is moving forward. By the way, my XFC facilitators, an all-women team in Houston, will be at the IN THE SPIRIT OF MANDELA mobilization to be convened as THE PEOPLE’S SENATE in Atlanta, GA for JULY 4th counterdemo to expose the true nature of AmeriKKKa’s hypocrite celebrations of its 250 YEARS OF SLAVERY AND WAR CRIMES AGAINST BLACKS (FREDERICK DOUGLAS ,THE TRUE MEANING OF THE FOURTH OF JULY FOR BLACKS. ,1852) , RAZA MEXICANA/CHICANA, AND INDIGENOUS FIRST NATIONS.

Stay in close touch

!!! TIERRA Y LIBERTAD !! MUERTE AL IMPERIALISMO YANQI !!! U.S. IMPERIALISM, HANDS OFF CUBA !!!

REVOLUCIONARIAMENTE, XINACHTLI (meaning “germinating seed” in NAHUATL)

Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Alvaro Hernández #255735
Post Office Box 660400
Dallas, Texas 75266­0400

Priscilla Grim was arrested in Atlanta during the Stop Cop City week of action three years ago. She was jailed for a month on outrageous domestic terrorism charges, denied bond twice despite substantial lack of evidence, and endured brutal and unsanitary conditions in both Dekalb County and Fulton County jails.

This “blind date with a book” fundraiser will directly support her material and legal needs. How it works is that you will purchase one of the bundle options, and Priscilla will pull books from her personal library to be sent to you.

Topics range from labor history, Marxism, film, music, and more. You also get pins and stickers with every purchase! Scan the QR code on the graphic or visit the website to purchase https://www.priscillagrim.com/blind-date-with-a-book

Background: https://supportpriscilla.org/

Marius Mason has been released! AK Press is donating $2 to his re-entry solidarity fund for each item we sell during the month of May. There’s one more weekend to help.

Self portrait by Marius Mason, from the Certain Days Calendar

Anarchist trans prisoner Marius Mason has finally being released after seventeen years of a twenty-two year sentence!

You can learn more about him and his case here.

Marius was one of the first people to be signed up for the Friends of AK prisoner support membership, and has over the years written reviews of AK Press books and been in friendly communication with collective members. In celebration of his release, and to help him land on his feet, we are giving Marius $2 for every item we sell on our website during the month of May (books, e-books, audiobooks, sweatshirts, you name it).

As of end of day yesterday, we’ve sold 1216 items this month (for a donation of $2432). Can we make it to $3000 for Marius in the last three days? Please help by ordering that book or shirt you’ve had your eye on, and spreading the word!

(You can also skip the AK Press-middle man and help him directly through his support committee, here.)

Support political prisoners!

I am feeling some bittersweet feelings, having left prison after some 17 years. I met so many people, from so many communities and families, who found themselves incarcerated for a myriad of reasons. As we move into this time of contention, where there will be conflict between the state and the communities we know – there may be more of the people we love sharing that hidden world behind bars and kept apart. To recognize and remember them is important and it keeps those ties we have to them strong. Please help me this June 11th, to send some love, some hope and a promise to remember to all of our people who are living behind bars.

I am including a poem I wrote for my Yale poetry class in prison. At Danbury, we had a tradition of hugging a certain tree in the parking lot as we got ready to leave one of the three prisons there, the camp, the FSL or the FCI. I was able to hug this sycamore tree, and to tie a new crocheted wrap that a lot of people at the FSL had contributed, so many stitches, so many colors, so many lives maintaining hope for freedom and the embrace of our family and friends.

The Freedom Tree

It’s the sycamore tree that’s in the parking lot,

From two day’s warmth, has put out leaves.

The bleached bark, peeling and stark, is shot

Against the sky, arms lifted in a silent plea,

The “Freedom Tree”.

Willing time to move forward, we see it expand,

The days are in those fingertips.

Buds break to burgeon into hands

That sweep the sky, wide, now that wind no longer keens

And grass grows green.

There is a wild crocheted belt that encircles it,

Proof that one of us made it out,

And left behind a sign that’s spun

From everything we dreamed, while we longed to be

Touching this tree.

Bob Marley also sang of a sycamore tree that was part of his songs about freedom and history. I hope that you will participate in this event, helping me mark a day to remember all the friends I left behind, and all of the people we are missing from our movement, and our communities. Anything will do, as long as it is braided or crocheted or knitted to show how we are all part of a whole together, and stronger together than any one strand alone. There is no particular color combination, as many as you have to weave together. We are all different, but all of us belong together and free. Please help me mark this very first Freedom Tree event on June 11th. 

Thank you so much for your act of solidarity. 

Love and freedom, Marius Mason

via NYC ABC

Here is the latest compilation of every-other-week updates:
https://nycabc.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/26-may-2026.pdf

NYC ABC, along with several other individuals and prisoner support
crews, now send hard copies to all political prisoners and prisoners of
war we support.

If you consistently mail the latest updates to a specific prisoner,
please let us know so we can insure there’s no overlap. The goal is to
have copies sent to all of the prisoners we list.

Send birthday greetings to:
Kojo Bomani Sababu* #39384-066
USP Canaan 
P.O. Box 300 
Waymart, PA   18472
*Address envelope to Grailing Brown.

Summary:
Kojo Bomani Sababu is a New Afrikan Prisoner of War serving a 55 year sentence. Kojo was captured on December 19th, 1975 during a bank expropriation. He was subsequently charged with conspiracy for an alleged plan to use rockets, hand grenades and a helicopter in an attempt to free Puerto Rican Prisoner of War Oscar Lopez Rivera from the federal prison where he was serving a 55-year sentence for a 1981 conviction of seditious conspiracy.   

Background:

New Afrikan Prisoner of War, currently serving a 55-year sentence for actions carried out by the Black Liberation Army and attempted escape from prison with Puerto Rican independentista Oscar Lopez-Rivera. 

Sababu was born as Grailing Brown on May 27th, 1953 in Atlantic City New Jersey. He was born to Clarence and Edna Brown. Kojo described them as good parents. He described his father as a “diligent worker whose only indulgence was loyalty to the bosses.” Sadly tragedy would strike his family, fundamentally altering Kojo’s path in life. In 1962 his father died coming home from work. Two years later his mother was murdered. A guiding presence in his life, Kojo was devastated by the loss of his mother. Still, he continued to live out the lessons she taught him, that education is a tool with which to change society. 

At a very young age, he began to develop a New Afrikan consciousness. Growing up in Atlanta City, New Jersey organizations like the Nation of Islam were strong within the Black community. The organization helped Kojo gain his first experiences in nation-building. The Nation of Islam also reinforced his passion for knowledge and education that was given to him by his mother. 

In 1968, Sababu crossed paths with the Black Panther Party in Atlanta City. He began to participate in their political education course. However, at that time, he was still greatly influenced by cultural and religious nationalism.

 In 1972, Sababu was sent to the New Jersey State Prison in   Trenton. There he met two Black revolutionaries, Kuwasi Balagoon and Andaliwa Clark. These two individuals greatly influence his political development. When he was released three years later, he joined the Black Liberation Army (BLA). 

On November 15th, 1975, Sababu and another BLA member, Ojore Lutalo, were arrested after a high-speed chase. The incident began when police attempted to stop them after receiving a report of suspicious occupants in a car. The men were charged with eluding police and resisting arrest. A third individual managed to avoid escape. According to news reports five .32 caliber bullets were found in the car. 

One month later, on December 19th, four members of the Black Liberation Army expropriated funds from the Broad Street National Bank in Lawrence Township. The action turned into a shootout with police, as police gave chase for over a mile and into the neighboring city of Trenton. Three members of the BLA (Kojo Sababu, Ojore Lutalo, and Larry Anderson) were arrested, while a fourth member was able to avoid arrest. The three men were charged with possession of stolen property, possession of a dangerous weapon and being a fugitive.

In addition to the charges related to bank expropriation, Sababu was also charged with the killing of a drug dealer and another individual. On September 17, 1975, the two individuals were killed in an apartment in Atlantic City. Another individual, Darryl Conquest, was also charged with this incident. Sababu claims this action was also done as part of his involvement in the Black Liberation Army. 

In 1976, Kojo was sentenced to two life prison terms for the killings. In addition, the judge imposed an additional sentence of up to 17 consecutive years in prison on a charge of murder while armed. 

While in prison Sababu became active in the Inmate Legal Association (ILA), a non-profit legal aid organization that provided free legal assistance to  prisoners at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, New Jersey. In 1981, took on the role of the director. Conditions in the prison were dire. New criminal statutes in the state established mandatory minimums, creating overcrowding of the prisons. Prisoners started to find ways of escaping, causing further tension between the guards and prisoners. 

Sababu, as a representative of the Inmate Legal Association, was quoted in the newspaper raising these concerns to the outside world and warned that conditions were so severe that the “joint’s gonna blow.” Within a month of raising these concerns, Sababu was accused of being a ringleader of a plot to take over the state prison in Trenton, New Jersey. He denied the accusation and argued that this was merely an attempt to silence those who were speaking out. 

He and two others leaders of the ILA were sent to a federal prison in Lewisburg, PA. Months after the incident, the warden attempted to shut down the ILA by making accusation s that its leaders were plotting to attack leaders of another prisoner rights organizations. Leaders of both organizations saw this for what it was – an attempt to undermine avenues for inmates to have their voices heard. The Warden’s plans failed and the organization exists today. 

Plot to Self-Liberate 

In July 1986, three individuals were arrested, and six others were being sought on charges that they were involved in a plot to liberate Puerto Rican prisoner of war, Oscar Lopez-Rivera and Kojo Sababu from USP Leavenworth in Kansas. According to the government, the plan was to have a helicopter drop into the prison recreation yard in Leavenworth in August of 1985. Grenades and rocket launchers were to be used to attack the guard towers as Lopez-Rivera and Sababu escaped via the helicopter. 

The FBI was aware of the plot from the beginning due to an informant. Undercover agents provided members of the plot with explosives and placed tracking devices on the vehicles of  those involved in the plot. One of the tracking devices was discovered and those involved in the plot went underground. Charges against several of those allegedly involved were dropped, but seven individuals were indicted. Both Lopez-Rivera and Sababu were charged with involvement in the plot. Jaime Delgado and Dora Garcia, two Puerto Rican independence activists who were two of the three originally arrested were indicted. 

Two others, Claude Marks and Donna Wilmott were also indicted. Another man, Richard Cobb, was also indicted, but he pled guilty and agreed to testify for the prosecution. Mark and Wilmott were able to avoid capture for six years until they turned themselves in to the FBI. The other four were tried and convicted together. Delgado was sentenced to 4 years in prison and Garcia to 3 years.

 Puerto Rican Puerto Rican independentista prisoner of war, Oscar Rivera-Lopez received a 15-year sentence beyond his previous 55-year sentence. Sababu was sentenced to a 5-year sentence to run consecutive to the four life sentences. As a result of the attempted self-emancipation, both men were placed in solitary confinement at Marion Federal prison. After their capture in 1994, Claude Marks received a six year sentence for his role in the attempted liberation of Kojo Sababu and Oscar Rivera-Lopez. Donna Wilmott received a three year sentence. 

The Last Remaining 

In August of 2009, Ojore Lutalo, Sababu’s co-defendant from the bank expropriation was released from prison. Conquest, his co-defendant in the action against the drug dealer, was also released in the fall of 2015. Oscar Rivera-Lopez and all those associated with the attempted self-liberation at Leavenworth have also been released from prison. Sababu, however, remains behind bars for his participation in these actions. He remains committed and unawavering despite his imprisonment.

via NYC ABC
We’ve finished the latest version of the NYC ABC “Illustrated Guide to
Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War” and it’s available for viewing
(and download) by clicking on https://nycabc.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/nycabc_polprislisting_may-2026_legal.pdf.

This update includes updated mini-bios, illustrations, and address changes
for several prisoners. With this update, we are thrilled to remove
Marius Mason (halfway house)! Welcome back, Marius!