Imprisoned writer Mumia Abu-Jamal seeks UN intervention after 44 years behind bars

The former Black Panther’s lawyers ask a UN panel to review his detention after US legal avenues were exhausted As he approaches the 45th anniversary of his incarceration in December, the Black radical writer and prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is taking his claim that he has been subjected to arbitrary imprisonment for a crime that he did not commit to a new tribunal: the United Nations in Geneva. On Tuesday Abu-Jamal, 72, lodged a petition with the UN’s working group on arbitrary detention, a body...

By Ed Pilkington