Legal Team of Political Prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal Appeals to the UN for Support
July 28, 2026
Truthout: “World-renowned political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is 72 years old, suffering multiple health problems, and may die in prison, say legal advocates in a new request they filed today that asks the United Nations to support his release. Abu-Jamal’s legal team decided to appeal to the UN after having exhausted nearly every legal avenue for relief available in the United States.
Abu-Jamal was a Black Panther and journalist when he was convicted of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, and he has always maintained his innocence. His death sentence was overturned in 2001, and in 2011, Pennsylvania resentenced him to life without parole. Since then, ‘each attempt to secure Mr. Abu-Jamal a new and fair trial has been rejected,’ argues a submission his lawyer Bret Grote and others made on his behalf to the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
Grote told Truthout the filing, which UN rules limit to 20 pages, attempts to summarize nearly a half-century of the ‘failures of the criminal legal system’ in Abu-Jamal’s case, including an ‘unfair trial, a biased appellate process, decades of surveillance and censorship, and a death by incarceration sentence that has been recognized by the United Nations as violating international human rights standards.'”