MuMia InsiDe....

pstrongMUMIA ABU-JAMAL'S 'LEGAL BOMBSHELL'br / Man Confesses to Cop Slaying, says Mumia is innocent. "I have personal knowledge that Mumia Abu-Jamal did not shoot police officer Faulkner..." /strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/408/photo_2_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Teishan Latner,International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal /p pRevolutionary journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal is now in his twentieth year on Pennsylvania's death row, fighting for his life despite a mountain of evidence that he was framed for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia cop. Coerced witnesses, police lies, faulty ballistics evidence, inadequate and conniving legal defense, political card-playing and the denial of basic Constitutional rights are just a few of the ways that Mumia was railroaded to prison, but on May 4, 2001 his new legal team filed five new affidavits in federal court which further elucidate his case. Included are long-awaited statements from Mumia and his brother William Cook and, adding another roller-coaster dimension to the case, the confession of a man who claims he was the real killer of officer Daniel Faulkner, the cop whom Mumia is falsely accused of killing./p pAffidavit of Arnold Beverly: "I shot Faulkner in the face..." /p pWrites Beverly: "I was hired, along with another guy, and paid to shoot and kill Faulkner. I had heard that Faulkner was a problem for the Mob and corrupt policemen because he interfered with the graft and payoffs made to allow illegal activity including prostitution, gambling and drugs without prosecution in the Center City area...I shot Faulkner in the face at close range. Jamal was shot shortly after by a uniformed police officer who arrived on the scene..."/p pBeverly has since passed a lie-detector test administered by eminent polygraph expert Charles Hontson. Beverly has also asked for the opportunity to make a court deposition (confess in court) but the Philadelphia District Attorney's office has opposed it in a virtually unprecedented decision, claiming the confession is "ridiculous." The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal cannot yet guarantee the validity of Beverly's statement but is continuing its investigation. If admitted in court, the confession will likely be the most powerful evidential weapon yet in the struggle to release Mumia./p pAffidavit of Mumia Abu-Jamal: "I heard what sounded like gunshots..." /p pMumia Abu-Jamal was parked in his cab at 13th and Locust streets filling out his trip sheet when he heard gun shots, he writes in his affidavit. Recognizing his injured brother in the street behind him, he left the cab and ran toward him. "As I came across the street I saw a uniformed cop turn toward me gun in hand, saw a flash and went down to my knees...I had nothing to do with the killing of Faulkner." Mumia also explains his reasons for not issuing this account publicly until now. "At my trial I was denied the right to defend myself. I had no confidence in my court-appointed attorney, who never even asked me what happened that night...since I was denied all my rights at my trial I did not testify. I would not be used to make it look like I had a fair trial..."/p pAffidavit of William Cook: "When I first saw my brother, he was running..." /p pThose clamoring for Mumia's execution have long claimed that his pleas of innocence are undermined by the absence of court testimony from his brother, William Cook. Cook was indeed present at the scene, having just been beaten by officer Faulkner, but his affidavit maintains that Mumia had nothing to do with the shooting. However, Cook's silence until now was apparently motivated by a very legitimate concern: police retaliation. "When they had me in the police station they threatened to kill me and throw me in the river [if I involved myself in Mumia's trial]. I have been afraid for my life ever since that night. I have been afraid to tell anything about what happened" Cook also writes that he wanted to testify at the Post Conviction Relief hearings in 1995 but did not because of conflicting opinions from Mumia's lawyers, and because he did not receive protection from possible police retaliation. He disappeared immediately after and went into hiding, where he remains. /p pAffidavit of Donald Hersing: "I provided monetary payoffs and other considerations to various Philadelphia police officers..." /p pIn 1981 Hersing was an undercover FBI agent who was part of an investigation into the Philadelphia Police Department, the only federal corruption investigation of a police department in U.S. history. Hersing's testimony helped convict five Philadelphia cops of corruption of exactly the nature mentioned by Arnold Beverly in his confession to the Faulkner killing, and during the same time period. Hersing says that while working as an undercover FBI agent, Philadelphia police accepted his payoffs for the purpose of allowing prostitution and other activities to flourish in the Center City area. Hersing's testimony corroborates Beverly's claim of police corruption, something many in Philadelphia today say was "common knowledge" at the time. /p pAffidavit of Linn Washington: "The first thing that struck me was the absolute absence of any police"/p pCurrently a professor of journalism at Temple University in Philadelphia and an outspoken voice against police injustice, Linn Washington is also a former journalist colleague and personal friend of Mumia's. Washington says he inspected the scene of the shootings shortly after the incident and found it completely unguarded, enabling any bystander or cop to meddle with sensitive evidence. It was a circumstance he found "highly unusual," although not unprecedented: Washington had observed that Philadelphia police also suspiciously demolished the scene of the August 8, 1978 police attack on the MOVE organization, making investigations into the shooting death of a police officer there impossible, a killing that MOVE members were charged with. /p pThe affidavits are extremely compelling reading and should be reviewed by anyone concerned with the outcome of the struggle for Mumia's freedom. They are viewable on-line at a href="http://www.mumia.org" title="www.mumia.org"www.mumia.org/a, wwwfreemumia.org or by calling the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal at 215-476-5416. Organizations are encouraged to begin mobilizing now for the December 8, 2001 demonstration for Mumia in Philadelphia, as well as other actions. Contact the ICFFMAJ for more information.br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p