Sundiata Acoli has been imprisoned since 1973 -- nearly 50 years​​

New York, August 25 (RHC)-- Four Black police groups, including the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice, are calling for former Black Panther Sundiata Acoli to be released from prison.  The 84-year-old activist has been locked up for nearly 50 years. 

Sundiata Acoli was convicted of killing a state trooper on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. Acoli has long said police ambushed his car, which was also carrying two fellow members of the Black Liberation Army: Zayd Malik Shakur, who was shot to death, and Assata Shakur.  She was imprisoned over the incident but later escaped to Cuba, where she has political asylum. 

The Black police groups say Sundiata Acoli’s continued imprisonment after more than four decades is “an affront to racial justice.”