Tupac’s Auntie, Assata Shakur, the Black Liberation Army member and fugitive with a $2 million FBI reward on her head, died in Havana where she had received political asylum from Fidel Castro, the Cuban Foreign Ministry announced Friday.
According to the short announcement, Shakur, who was also known as Joanne Chesimard, died Thursday from “health ailments and her advanced age.”
Shakur, who was also the godmother and step-aunt of slain rapper Tupac Shakur, was 78 years old.
An outspoken proponent of armed revolution in the United States, Shakur was convicted for her role in a 1973 shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that killed a state trooper. Shakur was herself wounded in the exchange of gunfire and claimed that the FBI had targeted her for assassination as part of a widespread campaign against black militant organizations in the 1960s and 70s.
While serving a life sentence for the murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster, Shakur escaped prison in New Jersey in 1979 and began her life on the run.
Assata is transferred by authorities from Riker’s Island prison to the Middlesex County jail in January 1976 to await trial in the murder of state trooper Werner Foerster. Frank Hurley/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images
She resurfaced in 1984 in Cuba where then Cuban leader Fidel Castro awarded her political asylum. While living in Cuba, Shakur wrote books, appeared in a documentary and mocked US efforts to force her extradition.
In 2013 the FBI made Shakur the first woman on its most wanted terrorists list and, with the state of New Jersey Attorney, increased the reward for her capture to $2 million.
Her asylum on the communist-run island among a handful of other US fugitives from justice provided fodder for anti-Castro activists who argued that Cuba should be remain on the US State Department list of countries that sponsor state terrorism.
