Assata Shakur, terrorist and cop killer harbored by Havana since 1984, dies at 78 in Cuba

 She never renounced political violence and terrorism as methods of struggle

 

Cuba’s Foreign Ministry announced earlier today: “On September 25, 2025, U.S. citizen Joanne Deborah Byron, ‘Assata Shakur,’ passed away in Havana, Cuba, as a result of health ailments and her advanced age.” Her full name was Joanne Deborah Byron Chesimard, and she was a terrorist who escaped justice in 1979 while serving a life term for the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper.

The People’s Forum described her in a social media post as an “Anti-racist activist & freedom fighter.”

What happened in 1973?

Troopers Werner Foerster and James Harper arrested Joanne Chesimard and two of her associates on the New Jersey Turnpike on May 2, 1973, for a motor vehicle infraction. Unbeknownst to the troopers, all three subjects were carrying semi-automatic weapons and had fake identities. Chesimard opened fire from the front passenger seat, injuring Trooper James Harper in the shoulder. Chesimard got out of the car and kept shooting at both troopers until Harper’s return fire wounded her as she fled for cover.

Trooper Harper fatally injured James Coston, the passenger in the back seat, who also fired at the troopers. Trooper Werner Foerster and Clark Squire, the driver of the vehicle, were fighting hand-to-hand. After suffering serious injuries to his right arm and abdomen, Foerster was killed by roadside execution with his own military weapon. The jammed firearm belonging to Chesimard was discovered beside Foerster.

Forty years after the cold-blooded murder of this New Jersey state trooper, the fugitive convicted of the killing, Joanne Chesimard a.k.a. Assata Shakur, was named a Most Wanted Terrorist by the FBI, apparently the first woman ever to make the list, on May 2, 2013.

Reports by NPR and the New York Times have whitewashed what happened on May 2, 1973, but the FBI account which provides both context and an outline of what took place is damning.

Chesimard was an active, prominent member of the Black Panther Party and later the Black Liberation Army, which was described as one of the most violent militant organizations of 1970s. During this same time, the Black Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the murder of several police officers throughout the United States. On May 2, 1973, Chesimard and two accomplices were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike by Troopers James Harper and Werner Foerster for a motor vehicle violation. All three subjects possessed fictitious identification, and, unbeknownst to the troopers, all three were armed with semi-automatic handguns. From the front passenger seat, Chesimard fired the first shot, wounding Trooper James Harper in the shoulder. As Harper moved for cover, Chesimard exited the car and continued to fire at both troopers until she was wounded by Harper’s return fire.

The rear seat passenger, James Coston, also fired at the troopers and was mortally wounded by Trooper Harper. Trooper Werner Foerster was engaged in a hand-to-hand combat with the vehicle’s driver, Clark Squire. Foerster was severely wounded in his right arm and abdomen and then executed with his own service weapon on the roadside. Chesimard’s jammed handgun was found at Foerster’s side.

The three assailants returned to their car and drove down the road approximately five miles before abandoning the vehicle. Within half an hour, Chesimard was arrested by New Jersey State Troopers. Coston was found to have died near their vehicle, and Squire was found 40 hours later within a mile of their car.

Chesimard and Squire were charged, convicted, and sentenced for the murder of Trooper Werner Foerster, as well as on additional charges. Squire remains in jail. In 1979, Chesimard escaped with help from a coalition of radical, domestic terror groups who took two guards hostage during an armed assault at the facility where she was being lodged. She later fled to Cuba. Since this time, she has been classified as a federal fugitive and the subject of an unlawful flight to avoid confinement warrant.

Domestic terrorist who attacked U.S. Capitol broke Chesimard out of prison in 1979

Some more details on her escape. On November 2, 1979, Joanne Deborah Chesimard was broken out from Clinton Correctional Facility for Women by members of the Revolutionary Armed Task Force under the direction of the Black Liberation Army. Leftists over social media have celebrated the escape of this individual on the anniversary of her escape with the hashtag #AssataShakurLiberationDay.

 

 

She is not the only American woman to have links to Cuba and terrorism against the United States. Marilyn Buck engaged in terrorist actions including murdering three police in 1981 and bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1983 to protest the invasion of Grenada. Buck also helped to break Joanne Chesimard out of prison. Buck died of uterine cancer at home at age 62 on August 3, 2010. The Cuban government’s official media refer to her as an “activist and former political prisoner.”

Havana’s ideological defense of terrorism

The Castro dictatorship that harbored her continues to advocate revolutionary violence. The Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerilla by Carlos Marighella which has a chapter on terrorism and in its 1969 introduction states:

The accusation of “violence” or “terrorism” no longer has the negative meaning it used to have. It has acquired new clothing; a new color. It does not divide, it does not discredit; on the contrary, it represents a center of attraction. Today, to be “violent” or a “terrorist” is a quality that ennobles any honorable person, because it is an act worthy of a revolutionary engaged in armed struggle against the shameful military dictatorship and its atrocities.

The Cuban dictatorship published copies of the Mini-Manual in numerous languages and distributed copies worldwide in an effort to encourage urban guerrilla action and terrorism. Many on the left consider Joanne Chesimard a political prisoner because the murder of the police officer was politically motivated. However, she is not a prisoner of conscience because of the acts of violence she committed and continued to espouse until her death.

Who was Werner Foerster, the man Chesimard was found guilty of murdering?

Werner Foerster served two years and 10 months with the New Jersey State Police, and left behind his wife Rosa Charlotte Heider Foerster, and his 3 year-old son Eric. Prior to working for the police he had been a welder. Werner was just 34 years old. Both Werner and Rosa were German immigrants.

Werner Foerster with his son Eric

Today, let us remember Chesimard’s victims, and the sad fact that she evaded justice thanks to the dictatorship in Havana - that also advocated for the terrorism and political violence - leading to blood shed on American soil.

#RememberWernerFoerster

On eve of presidential election radical leftists are celebrating cop killer's prison break out to Cuba

 Cop killer and terrorist Joanne Chesimard a.k.a. Assata Shakur still wanted by the FBI.

 JOANNE DEBORAH CHESIMARD

 Act of Terrorism - Domestic Terrorism; Unlawful Flight to Avoid Confinement - Murder

DESCRIPTION 

Aliases:Assata Shakur, Joanne Byron, Barbara Odoms, Joanne Chesterman, Joan Davis, Justine Henderson, Mary Davis, Pat Chesimard, Jo-AnnChesimard, Joanne Debra Chesimard, Joanne D. Byron, Joanne D. Chesimard, Joanne Davis, Chesimard Joanne, Ches Chesimard, Sister-LoveChesimard, Joann Debra Byron Chesimard, Joanne Deborah Byron Chesimard, Joan Chesimard, Josephine Henderson, Carolyn Johnson, CarolBrown, "Ches"

On November 2, 1979, cop killer and terrorist Joanne Deborah Chesimard a.k.a Assata Shakur was broken out from Clinton Correctional Facility for Women by members of the Revolutionary Armed Task Force under the direction of the Black Liberation Army. Leftists over social media are celebrating the escape of this individual with the hashtag #AssataShakurLiberationDay.

There is nothing to celebrate.

Joanne Chesimard was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army which as a Maoist revolutionary movement advocated carrying rifles and shotguns in public demonstrations, and whose members on numerous occasions engaged in shoot outs with the police. Chesimard was arrested, tried, and convicted for murder for the shooting death of police officer Werner Foerster. Here is a summary of the officer's killing at the hand of the revolutionaries.

 

On May 2, 1973, New Jersey Trooper Werner Foerster was murdered with his own service weapon in the famous Joanne Chesimard case. Trooper Foerster was patrolling the Turnpike early in the morning when he arrived to back up Trooper James Harper, who had pulled a car over, according to the State Police.There was a discrepancy in the registration of the car, driven by Clark Squire. While Trooper Foerster questioned Squire, Trooper Harper questioned the other two occupants, Joanne Chesimard and James Coston. Shots were fired from within the car and Trooper Foerster was hit, sustaining injuries in his shoulder and arm. Trooper Harper shot and killed Costan.Trooper Foerster was also hit with multiple shots in his chest. While he was down, his service weapon was taken and he was executed with two shots to the head.

Werner Foerster served two years and 10 months with the New Jersey State Police, and left behind his wife Rosa Charlotte Heider Foerster, and his 3 year-old son Eric. Prior to working for the police he had been a welder. Werner was just 34 years old. Both Werner and Rosa were German immigrants. 

Werner Foerster with his son Eric

Joanne Chesimard was broken out of prison on November 2, 1979 and escaped to Cuba emerging there in 1984 as Assata Shakur and remains on the island a fugitive from justice. Shakur and the Castro dictatorship that harbors her continues to advocate revolutionary violence. The Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerilla by Carlos Marighella which has a chapter on terrorism and in its 1969 introduction states:

The accusation of "violence" or "terrorism" no longer has the negative meaning it used to have. It has acquired new clothing; a new color. It does not divide, it does not discredit; on the contrary, it represents a center of attraction. Today, to be "violent" or a "terrorist" is a quality that ennobles any honorable person, because it is an act worthy of a revolutionary engaged in armed struggle against the shameful military dictatorship and its atrocities.

The Cuban dictatorship published copies of the Mini-Manual in numerous languages and distributed copies worldwide in an effort to encourage urban guerrilla action and terrorism. Many on the left consider Joanne Chesimard a political prisoner because the murder of the police officer was politically motivated. However, she is not a prisoner of conscience because of the acts of violence she committed and continues to espouse to the present day.

She continues to be wanted by the FBI for terrorism and murder.

Obama legacy project continues: Freeing a Castro spy to pardon a cop killer?

Compromising U.S. national security as a legacy project continues

Ana Belen Montes and Joanne Chesimard

 At the 2015 Washington Correspondents' Dinner President Obama announced jokingly that his New Policy List Rhymes With 'Bucket List.' Unfortunately his initiatives in Cuba included releasing on December 17, 2014 three Cuban spies, one of which was convicted of murder conspiracy in an act of state terrorism that claimed four American lives. This is no joking matter.

New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster

The news emerging today of the United States possibly trading Ana Belen Montes, a high ranking Pentagon official who spied for the Castro regime for 17 years before being arrested in 2001, for cop killer and fugitive Joanne Chesimard a.k.a Assata Shakur. Chesimard shot and killed Werner Foerster, a 34-year-old state trooper with his own gun in 1973.

Victim of Montes's spying Gregory A. Fronius

According to spycatcher Chris Simmons who played a role in the capture of Ana Belen Montes she was responsible for at least the deaths of 65 soldiers, including a U.S. green beret Gregory A. Fronius in 1987.

If the deal goes through and cop killer Joanne Chesimard is brought to the United States then you can expect her to receive a presidential pardon before President Obama leaves the White House on January 20, 2017.

Two items on the list that rhymes with 'bucket list' that seems more self serving than it does defending the just interests of the United States.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the family of Gregory A. Fronius, the other soldiers killed, and for the New Jersey State Trooper killed by Joanne Chesimard.

NSA Whistle blower Edward Snowden on way to Cuba, final stop Ecuador

Cubans and Chinese are also listening in on your phone calls 

Cuban listening post in Bejucal

Early this morning got a phone call from Fox and Friends to comment on breaking news that Edward Snowden was possibly on his way to Cuba. Below is a more extended version of what I had to say. 

The CIA's first defector was Philip Agee who died in Cuba in 2008 at the age of 72. He had defected to Cuba in 1973 and made public the identity of 250 alleged CIA officers and agents.  It was the Cubans and not the KGB who had successfully recruited him. Beyond the intelligence damage the Cuban dictatorship used him as a propaganda tool publishing books under his name and engaging in campaigns to discredit the international image of the United States  

Edward Snowden’s disclosures that the United States spies on the phone conversations and internet communications of tens of millions Americans all the time is a less aggressive version of what is standard operating procedure for Cuba’s totalitarian regime, and this disclosure provides an opportunity for Cuba's propaganda machinery to counter critics of their own inexcusable behavior on the subject. 

What the international news media fails to mention is that the Chinese and Cubans have also been systematically spying on the phone conversations of tens of millions of Americans. It began in the 1960s with the Lourdes spy base in Cuba that was first operated by the Russians and kept running with the help of the Chinese until it closed some time in the 2000s . Another important base run by a well-trained Cuban electronic intelligence battalion working together with the Chinese is the base in Bejucal.  There is also an understanding with the regime in Havana to share intelligence with the Russians.

Americans should not be shocked that Snowden would be traveling through, or staying in Cuba. There have been many other fugitives from the United States that have been hiding out in Cuba, including one designated a terrorist by the FBI.

The Castro regime has a history of harboring U.S. fugitives from justice such as FBI designated American terrorist Joanna Chesimard a.k.a. Assata Shakur who has been granted political asylum in Cuba and has a website that promotes international terrorism with a manual published by the Cubans.

The question arises how dangerous is the information that Edward Snowden has acquired as an independent contractor with classified status? Its more embarrassing than it is dangerous. Suspect its no where near the damaging information high ranking U.S. officials with secret clearance that worked for the Castro regime for decades had as were the cases of Ana Belen Montes at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Kendall Myers at the U.S. State Department and Marta Rita Velazquez at the Agency for International Development, (she was also the woman who recruited Ana Belen Montes for the Cubans). Velazquez fled to Sweden, a neutral country, where she married a Swedish Foreign Ministry insider.

As recently as 2012 there were reports in the media of Cuban, Iranian and Venezuelan officials meeting in Mexico to discuss cyber attacks on U.S. soil allegedly seeking information about nuclear power plants in the United States. Supposedly the FBI had opened an investigation into the matter, but there was no mention of this in the State Department's 2012 report.

This has been going on for a long time.

The Cuban government infiltrated a network of spies into the United States that it called the WASP network with the objective of spying on U.S. military installations, spying on Cuban exiles, identifying locations to store weapons and explosives on U.S. territory and planned to first terrorize then assassinate a man they identified as a CIA agent living in Bal Harbour, Florida using a mail bomb. 

This network engaged in measures that cost lives.

The Cuban WASP network had a role in the February 24, 1996 shoot down in which U.S. citizens were killed in international airspace and the head of the spy network was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder for his role in the death of the four men killed. The Cubans want them back and have been holding Alan Gross as a de facto hostage since December 2009. The spy network was broken up by the U.S. government in 1998 and according to newspaper accounts in 2008 the Castro regime had rebuilt its spy network.

It is unlikely but the Castro regime could also use Snowden as a bargaining chip to get back their four agents and like North Korea, who was taken off the list of terror sponsors by blackmailing the United States, engage in a similar tactic here. This is also why it is unlikely that Snowden would remain in Cuba as a final destination. 

Since Julian Assange of Wikileaks is involved, who has received political asylum in Ecuador, therefore Ecuador would be my bet for where he winds up, if not Iceland.Otherwise if he is foolish enough to stay in Cuba or ends up in Venezuela he could find himself traded back to the United States or in an even worse situation.

Cop killer fugitive in Cuba named Most Wanted Terrorist by the FBI

"Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak." - Mohandas K. Gandhi

Forty years after the cold-blooded murder of a New Jersey state trooper, the fugitive convicted of the killing, Joanne Chesimard a.k.a. Assata Shakur, has been named a Most Wanted Terrorist by the FBI—apparently the first woman ever to make the list.

Unfortunately, she is not the only American woman to have links to Cuba and terrorism against the United States. Marilyn Buck engaged in terrorist actions including murdering three police in 1981 and bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1983to protest the invasion of Grenada. Buck also helped to break Joanne Chesimard out of prison. Buck died of uterine cancer at home at age 62 on August 3, 2010 and the Cuban government controlled media refer to her as an "activist and former political prisoner." Will they defend Joanne Chesimard a.k.a Assata Shakur in the same manner?

Joanne Chesimard and Marilyn Buckon FBI wanted poster

Joanne Chesimard was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army which as a Maoist revolutionary movement advocated carrying rifles and shotguns in public demonstrations, and whose members on numerous occasions engaged in shoot outs with the police. Chesimard was arrested, tried, and convicted for murder for the shooting death of police officer Werner Foerster. Joanne Chesimard escaped to Cuba in 1979 emerging there in 1984 as Assata Shakur and remains there a fugitive from justice. Unlike everyday Cubans who are unable to obtain easy access to the internet Ms. Shakur has her own website. On her website , based in Cuba, Shakur continues to advocate revolutionary violence. The fugitive has reproduced on her website the Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerilla by Carlos Marighella which has a chapter on terrorism and in its 1969 introduction states:

The accusation of "violence" or "terrorism" no longer has the negative meaning it used to have. It has acquired new clothing; a new color. It does not divide, it does not discredit; on the contrary, it represents a center of attraction. Today, to be "violent" or a "terrorist" is a quality that ennobles any honorable person, because it is an act worthy of a revolutionary engaged in armed struggle against the shameful military dictatorship and its atrocities.

The Cuban dictatorship published copies of the Mini-Manual in numerous languages and distributed copies worldwide in an effort to encourage urban guerrilla action and terrorism. Many on the left consider Joanne Chesimard a political prisoner because the murder of the police officer was politically motivated. However, she is not a prisoner of conscience because of the acts of violence she committed and continues to espouse to the present day.

This is also one more reason why the government in Cuba should remain on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.