NY Times Artice 5/1/98

"Fugitive in Cuba Rubs a Wound in Trenton"
note: article shows two separate photos: of Chesimard and Gov. Whitman
Washington (by James Dao) 5/1/1998

The case, for all its essential elements, had begun to blur in the
public's consciousness.  Twenty-five years ago almost to the day, Joanne
D. Chesimard, the leader of a black militant group, was involved in a
bloddy gunfight on the New Jersey Turnpike that left a state trooper
dead, shot-execution style in the back of the head with his own weapon.

  In 1977, Ms. Chesimard was convicted of killing the trooper, Werner
Foerster, but she escaped from prison two years later during a daring
daylight breakout and eventually fled to Cuba.  She has been living in
Havana for nearly 14 years now, studying, writing and, for a time, caring
for her daughter, as a guest of the Castro government, which has shielded
her from extradition to the United States.

   And there her stort seemed to be fading quietly into history until the
visit of Pope John Paul II in January, when a New York City television
reporter accompanying the Pontiff tracked her down.  In an interview
broadcast on WNBC-TV a week later, Ms. Chesimard unrepentantly proclaimed
her innocence and called herself a victim of a racist judicial system.

  With those defiant words, Ms. Chesimard has set off a war of words with
Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and other New Jersey politicians, who have
turned her case into a cause celebre, touched off a furious debate over
the airwaves and the Internet about her guilt and reopened deep emotional
wounds left by the killing and her bold escape.

  Mrs. Whitman, who says she considered Ms. Chesimard's telivised remarks
"an affront," fired off letters to Attorney General Janet Reno and
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright demanding that the Clinton
Administration pressure Cuba to send Ms. Chesimard back.  She has
increased the state's reward for Ms. Chesimard to $100,000 from $25,000.
And earlier this month, she broadcast a lengthy message into Cuba via
Radio Marti, a radio station run by Cuban expatriots in Florida, calling
on the Cuban people to help return the fugitive to the United States.

  The Superintendent of the New Jersey State Policewho to this day has
kept a detective working full time on the case, even sent a letter to the
Pope asking him to press the Cuban President, Fidel Castro, to return Ms.
Chesimard.  And Representative Bob Franks, a Republican from New
Providence, has introduced a resolution calling on Cuba to return Ms.
Chesimard and 90 other fugitives to the United States.

  "Before we can fully open relations with the Cuban government, with the
Castro Government, they have to send back to us those felons who are
enjoying a special status in that country now," Mrs. Whitman said today
at a news conference with members of Congress outside the capitol. "We
cannot go forward, we should not go forward with normalization while he
is harboring cop killers."

  Ms. Chesimard, 50, who now calls herself Assata Shakur, has hardly sat
by in silence.  She has written her side of the story to the Pope.  She
has professed her innocence in recent interviews with newspapers and
WBAI-FM, a New York City radio station.  And she has posted a long letter
on the Internet refuting the prosecution's case against her while
attacking Mrs. Whitman and other New Jersey politicians as opportunists
bent on trying to score points with white conservatives.

  Officials at the Justice Dept. and State Dept. declined to comment on
Ms. Chesimard's case or Mrs. Whitman's letters.  But a State Dept.
official said that the Clinton Adminsitration had urged the Castro
Government to return the fugitive, to no avail.

  Ms. Chesimard's exodous has taken her from her middle-class childhood
in Queens to conversion to Roman Catholicism to a budding militancy at
City College. She was affiliated with a variety of black revolutionary
organizations in the 1960s and by the early 1970's, the police say, was
the "soul" of a group calling itself the Black Liberation Army.  Law
enforcement officials have said the group was responsible for a string of
bank robberies, murders and assaults on police officers.

  Several people linked to the group were later convicted of
participating in the botched 1981 Brinks robbery in Rockland County in
which a guard and two police officers were killed.

   On May 2, 1973, Ms. Chesimard and two companions were traveling south
on the New Jersey Turnpike in New Brunswick when they were pulled over
for a routine check by two New Jersey state troopers.  A shootout began,
and Trooper Foerster and one of Ms. Chesimard's companions, James F.
Coston, were killed.  Another trooper, James M. Harper, was wounded.

  Ms. Chesimard, who was wounded, was captured about five miles away, the
police said.  The prosecution could not prove that she fired the fatal
shots.  But New Jersey law says that all parties involved in the killing
of a police officer are equally responsible, and an all-white jury
convicted her of murder.

  On Nov 2, 1979, with the help of three armed men, she broke out of a
state prison in Clinton, N.J. and disappeared.  By her own account, she
fled in 1984 to Cuba, where the Government granted her refuge and has
been subsidizing her living expenses.

  Ms. chesimard had largely faded from public view until early February.
 Ms. Whitman said today that she had been outraged at the televised
images of Ms. Chesimard, looking healthy, comfortable and relaxed in
Havana, juxtaposed with scenes of Mr. Foerster's widow, Rose Foerster,
who lives in Florida, looking distraught, broken and tearful.

  "My son lost his dad," Mrs. Foerster said in an interview.  Told that
Mrs. chesimard had expressed sorrow for her husband's death, while still
denying responsibility, Mrs. Foerster replied, "She don't know what
suffering is."

---Jerry