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Tuesday 7 June 2011

COINTELPRO target Geronimo Pratt dead in African village


Michael Richardson

http://exm.nr/lgkete 


Elmer Geronimo “Ji Jaga” Pratt is dead at 63 in his adopted African home of Imbaseni Village in Tanzania.  Pratt is reported to have died of complications of malaria and heart disease.  Pratt was born September 13, 1947 in Morgan City, Louisiana.
Geronimo Pratt is known to most people for his 27-year imprisonment on murder charges where he had been convicted in a trial tainted by withheld evidence and convicted on the testimony of an informer.  Ordered freed in 1997, after years in solitary confinement, the former Black Panther leader eventually won $4.5 million dollars in a false imprisonment civil action.
The case of Geronimo Pratt was recently cited in Nebraska by the American Civil Liberties Union in an amicus brief urging the Nebraska Supreme Court to grant a new trial to Omaha Two ex-Black Panther leader Ed Poindexter.   The state high court denied Poindexter’s appeal and ignored similar misconduct in Pratt’s case as unimportant.
Pratt’s role in self-defense training for the Black Panthers made him one of J. Edgar Hoover’s targets in the clandestine counter-intelligence program codenamed COINTELPRO.  Hoover considered the Black Panthers the most dangerous group in America and launched his secret war with lethal ferocity.  One of the tactics used by Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation was to manipulate evidence and obtain convictions of Black Panther leaders.
Hoover closely managed the COINTELPRO operation demanding results from field offices he considered ineffective.  Successful schemes were touted to other FBI offices and a virtual crime wave swept the nation directed from Hoover’s “Seat of Government” headquarters
Geronimo Pratt‘s attorney Stuart Hanlon told the Oakland Tribune:  “What happened to him is the horror story of the United States…..The COINTELPRO program was awful.  He became a symbol for what they did.”
Former Black Panther leader David Hilliard spoke respectfully of the man who called himself Ji Jaga.  “He is one of the true heroes of our era.  He dedicated his life to service of his people.  There is nothing more honorable than that.”
Geronimo Pratt moved to Tanzania to be part of the Black Panther community there founded by Pete and Charlotte O’Neal, formerly of Kansas City, Missouri.
O’Neal told National Public Radio:  “Geronimo was a symbol of steadfast resistance against all that is considered wrong and improper.  His whole life was dedicated to standing in opposition to oppression and exploitation.  He gave all that he had.”

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