Who IS RUSSEL MAROON SHOATS ?

Russel Maroon Shoats is a new African political prisoner of war, who is serving a prison sentence at the Wayneburg, Pensylvania state institution. He was originaly locked up in January, 1972, and has spent 25 years in 15 different state, county, federal prisons, jails, and maximum security prison/mental institution. He spent 17 years in the holes of various facilities, on locked down for more than 23 hours daily. During the middle 1960's he became increasingly, politically aware, and active in the New African Liberation Movement. Russel Maroon Shoats became a founding member of the Black Unity Council, a Philidelphia grouping that eventualy merged with the Philidelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1969. He became a fugitive in 1970, at the height of the nation wide repression of the New African Liberation Movement, after a policeman was killed, and another one wounded in a retaliationary attack on a Philidelphia police station. This was in response to the repression of the New African Liberation Movement, and the unjustified killing of a New African youth by a reppresive police in the local community. From August 1970, until January 1972 the date of his capture and arrest, he was active in the armed front of the New African Liberation Army. He was tried and convicted for the attack on the police station, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. In September 1977, himself and three other New African Political Prisoners freed themselves from a state prison at Huntington, PA. Two of these brave individuals were recaptured, and one killed dureing the escape, but Russel Maroon Shoats remained at lrge for a month, dureing a massive "slave style" hunt, by local, state, and federal forces who had recruited the local rural populace to help in their search. He was captured in October 1977, and until November 1989 held in various "holes" in numerous state, county, and federal prisions, and maximum-security prison/mental institutions. Russel Maroon Shoats was forcibly transferred to the maximum security-security prison/mental institution at Waymart, Pennsylvania, known as "Fairview", where he was focibly drugged, and on one ocassion hospitalized from a hospital induced drug overdoce. In March 1980, himself, and another New Afrikan Political Prisoner of War were able to free themselves from this institution when a New Afrikan activist smuggled a revolver, and a sub-machine gun into the institution for their use, but three days later all three were captured after a gun battle with local, state, and county police and FBI agents. Dureing the historic Camp Hill rebellion, during October 1989, at the Pennsylvania state prison at Camp Hill, he was transferred from the state in- prison at Dallas, to the U.S. Penitentiary at Lewisburg, and then to the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Although he had no part in this rebellion, and having been at Dallas at the time, he was nevertheless singled out by the unjust prison administration to be transferred over 1,000 miles from family, supporters, and friends with a view towards having him confined at the notorious federal prioson at Marion, Illinois. While being kept on 23-hours a day lockdown at Leavenworth, during November 1989, his relatives and supporters mounted a campaign to reveal the lies, and falsified records the Pennsylvania prison administration had used to implicate him in the Camp Hill rebellion that were used as a basis for his transfer to Leavenworth and there to be evaluated for placement at Marion, Illinois. they had succesful efforts, and he was finally released to the general prison population in December 1989. Since June 1991, he is now being held on 23-hour lockdown at the Dallas and Waynesburg state institution, where he remains a committed New Afrikan freedom fighter who wont rest until the New Afrikan peoples are free from oppression, an a free and self-governing nation. Russel Maroon Shoats is still in unjust, inhumaine 23 hours a day solitary lockdown in the SCI Green Control Unit. Control Units are a well cited human rights violation known to cause insanity, and physical deterioration. Amnesty International and many other human rights groups have condemned control units
Please Write and Support:
Russell Shoats AF-3855SCI Greene175 Progress DriveWaynesburg, PA 15370-8090 http://www.prisonactivist.org/pipermail/prisonact-list/1998-March/001330.html