Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

BLACK LIBERATION ARMY • 81on the restaurant and on a crowd outside a nearby synagogue, killingsix and injuring 27. On 10 April 1983 Black June killed PLO representativeIssam Sartawi at a meeting of the Socialist International inPortugal. See also FATAH REVOLUTIONARY COUNCIL.BLACK LIBERATION ARMY (BLA). One of the two most violentleft-wing nonstate, revolutionary groups in the United States duringthe 1960s, the other being the Weather Underground. Born out ofthe social unrest of the 1960s, the BLA particularly targeted law enforcementofficers and was responsible for eight killings in the period1971–1973, including two New York City policemen on 27 January1972. A crackdown by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)led to arrests of leading members, after which the group’s activitiessubsided. In the early 1980s remnants of the BLA merged withthe Weather Underground to form the Revolutionary Armed TaskForce, which engaged in a series of bombings of federal governmentand multinational corporation offices as well as an attempted robberyof a Brinks armored carrier in October 1981.On 2 May 1973, when Joanne Chesimard and two other BLAmembers driving the New Jersey Turnpike near New Brunswick werestopped for a routine check by two New Jersey state troopers, theyshot the troopers, killing one and wounding the other. Chesimard,injured in the gunfire, was arrested when found five miles from theshooting scene. Law enforcement officials considered her the “soul”of the BLA and although the prosecution never proved she had firedon the officers, she was convicted of murder under state law as an accessoryand sentenced to prison. On 2 November 1979 she broke outof the state prison in Clinton with the help of three armed men.In 1984 she fled to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum aswell as living expenses. Chesimard, who changed her name to AssaturShakar, gave an interview to a WNBC-TV reporter covering the January1998 visit to Cuba of Pope John Paul II, in which she maintainedher innocence and denounced the New Jersey court system as racist.New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman denounced the interviewas “an affront,” raised the reward for Chesimard’s capture from$25,000 to $100,000, and contacted U.S. Attorney General Janet Renoand U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to demand that theUnited States pressure Cuba into extraditing Chesimard. In 2005 theFBI placed Chesimard on its list of most wanted domestic terrorists,