Nehanda Abiodun

"I never decided to come down here; it was decided for me." —Nehanda

Cuba: Photo by Amelia Herbert

Nehanda Abiodun, former member of the Black Liberation Army, continues her activism, fighting for the rights of political prisoners and prisoners of war while in exile.

Nehanda Abiodun

Since 1981 she'd been living underground, pursued across the United States by the FBI on charges of armed robbery, murder, racketeering, and federal conspiracy in connection with a string of armored-car holdups in the New York City area. She was wanted as well on charges connected to the 1979 New Jersey jailbreak of Black Liberation Army figurehead Assata Shakur, who had been convicted of charges stemming from the murder of a police officer in 1973. (Shakur also was granted political asylum by Cuba and lives there today, though she recently has gone into hiding.)

The FBI alleges that Abiodun was part of a group that came into being in late 1978 and originally called itself simply “the Family.” According to court records and statements from captured members who became informers, the Family's ranks consisted of some two dozen people, both blacks and whites, most of whom had cultivated their ideological fervor as members of groups such as the Sixties-era Black Panther Party and its offshoot, the Black Liberation Army; the Republic of New Afrika; and the Weather Underground.