Mondo we Langa (formerly David Rice) imprisoned in the maximum security Nebraska State Penitentiary at Lincoln is serving a life sentence for the 1970 bombing murder of an Omaha policeman.
Mondo was a leader of the Black Panther Party affiliate National Committee to Combat Fascism in Omaha and was convicted with Ed Poindexter, chairman of the Omaha chapter, for the murder of Larry Minard. Both men were targets of the infamous Operation COINTELPRO of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, waged his own secret war on political activists in America using the clandestine COINTELPRO bureaucracy against individuals and groups he targeted in the largest abuse of law enforcement powers in American history.
Minard had been lured to his death by an anonymous 911 caller. Hoover ordered the withholding of a FBI crime lab report on the identity of the 911 caller in order to convict the two Panther leaders now known as the Omaha Two.
In an exclusive prison interview Mondo we Langa, who maintains his innocence, talked about COINTELPRO and his prosecution from the prison where he has been held for four decades.
"We didn't know about COINTELPRO…but what we did know in the Party is that in `69 Fred Hampton and Mark Clark had been murdered by the police in Chicago. We knew that all over the country Panthers were being targeted by the police, the FBI and so forth, So even though we didn't know about the existence of COINTELPRO we did know that some things were going on that should not be going on in a supposed democracy."
"It is about paranoia. And when you think about it the U.S. government had a right to be paranoid
They were doing wrong to people every day."
"But there were a couple of agendas working hand in hand. One, you had the Omaha Police Department. Two, you had the FBI. Now the FBI's agenda was probably more related to the destruction of the Black Panther Party solely. The Omaha Police agenda had that as part of their agenda as well as finding the killer or killers of Minard. You can believe those cops wanted somebody."
"But when you put the two agendas together, that is where we ended up with the situation where six people were so-called suspects and only two people went to trial. Somebody had to pay for Minard's killing, so they got that taken care of. At the same time they were able to essentially kill the head so the body would die."
Mondo we Langa currently has a new trial request pending before the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals citing a new forensic analysis of the 911 tape that disputes the official version of the case. No date for a decision on the request has been set.
Permission granted to reprint
YouTube prison interview with Mondo we Langa
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