An elder Black liberation leader and military veteran could spend the rest of his life in prison for speaking about decolonization and self-determination at international conferences in Russia. A year ago today, the Department of Justice announced they indicted four U.S. citizens for sowing discord, spreading pro-Russia propaganda and interference in U.S. elections. Omali Yeshitela, the co-founder of one of the longest lasting Black Power movements in history was among the four indicted. Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), Yeshitela faces federal charges of conspiring with Russians to act as illegal agents of the Russian government.

The four U.S. citizens charged were all affiliated with APSP and the overarching Uhuru Movement.

• Omali Yeshitela, 82, Chairman and co-founder of APSP
• Penny Hess, 78, Chair of African People’s Solidarity Committee
• Jesse Nevel, 34, Chair of Uhuru Solidarity Movement
• Augustus Romain Jr., aka Gazi Kodzo, 33, former member of APSP (was kicked out) and founder of Black Hammer

Along with the four Americans, three Russian nationals, two of them officers for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), were also charged along with a separate Russian in a connected case. The three Russian nationals were pro-Kremlin lobbyist, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, and two FSB members, Aleksey Borisovich Sukhodolov and Yegor Sergeyevich Popov.

The case revolves around 33-year-old Aleksandr Ionov and The Dialogue of Nations conferences, which are funded in part by the Russian government and held in Moscow. The conferences in 2015 and 2016 were sponsored by the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), an NGO founded by Ionov, and featured numerous international separatist groups and were centered around themes of self-determination.

According to the federal indictment, it was the 2015 conference in which Omali Yeshitela attended and spoke, at the invite of Ionov, when the relationship started that led to the federal charges.

After unsealing the indictments, the Department of Justice’s Matthew G. Olsen said “Russia’s foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights … to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States.” The U.S. government has a $10 million reward for information that leads to the identification or location of Aleksandr Ionov.

The indictments announced on April 18, 2023 came after violent federal raids of APSP houses and offices in 2022. Yeshitela, Hess, and Nevel, now known as the “Uhuru 3,” face up to 15 years in prison and have trial scheduled for September 3, 2024 in Tampa, Florida.

“The attack on us is an attack on Omali Yeshitela,” said long time accomplice for Black liberation, Penny Hess, said on April 17, 2024. “The Chairman’s visits to Russia on two occasions [were] part of the Party’s strategy to win international support for the struggle for African Liberation,” wrote Hess in a blog titled ‘Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Uhuru 3 put state on trial in fightback against bogus charges.‘

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Omali Yeshitela, Decades Fighting for Liberation and Reparations

For nearly three quarters of a century, 82 year old Omali Yeshitela has fought for the liberation of Black Americans. Born in 1941 and growing up within the generation of Black Power, Yeshitela was just two months younger than Emmett Till, who was lynched, and was in his early 20s when Malcolm X was assassinated.

Yeshitela was publicly introduced to younger generations through the groundbreaking liberatory hip-hop album Let’s Get Free, by the Florida-based group dead prez in 2000. Excerpts of speeches made by Yeshitela were used in the intro, Wolves and the song Police State.

In the late 50s and early 60s, Yeshitela endured several racist incidents while enrolled in the U.S. Army. Yeshitela said it was during his time in the military that he began to tie together imperialism and colonialism as the basis for the constant violent racism he endured in the U.S. as a Black man.

Yeshitela organized with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 60s. In 1966, he was sentenced to five years in prison for tearing down a racist mural in the city hall of his hometown St. Petersburg, Florida.

In 1968, Yeshitela founded the Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO) along with what’s now the oldest Black Power newspaper, The Burning Spear Newspaper. He then co-founded the APSP (African People’s Socialist Party) in 1972 which merged JOMO and other groups while bringing the newspaper with him. Yeshitela has since authored and published over a dozen books through Burning Spear Publications.

As Chairman of the APSP, Yeshitela’s message has stayed consistent over the decades — he’s committed to Black liberation and for African internationalism (pan-Africanism), and opposed to what he calls “parasitic capitalism” brought by Western colonialism. Four decades ago, Yeshitela helped propel the discussion of reparations for Black American descendants of slavery by organizing the first World Tribunal on Reparations to African People in the U.S.

Since founding the APSP, Yeshitela has helped form a litany of organizations working for Black empowerment and self-determination under what became known as the Uhuru Movement. Some of the other groups include: African National Reparations Organization (ANRO), the African National Prisoners Organization (ANPO), the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM), the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP), and the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO).

Yeshitela’s efforts have led to at least 50 new economic development initiatives across multiple cities over several decades. More recently, Yeshitela’s African People’s Education and Defense Fund (APEDF), a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and Black Star Industries launched the Black Power Blueprint, to “transform the future” of Black St. Louis residents, after the police killing of Mike Brown in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.

Among the many projects of the Black Power Blueprint in St. Louis are a new community basketball court, community garden, workforce housing, the African Doula Project, Uhuru House Community Center, the Akwaabe Banquet Hall and more. Despite the indictments and the institutional fallout from the indictments like losing bank loans and funders, the work of the Black Power Blueprint continues.

Since the beginning of his organizing, Yeshitela has called for interracial solidarity and has welcomed white people into the APSP. In 1976, he created the African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC) and later the Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM).

The APSC is headed by Penny Hess and the USM is chaired by Jesse Nevel — both white Americans and both indicted by the FBI along with Yeshitela (Hess, Nevel, and Yeshitela are the Uhuru 3).

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Unprecedented Indictment

It was a federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida that returned a superseding indictment in April 2023 finding what they deemed as enough evidence to charge four Americans and three Russians for conducting “a multi-year foreign malign influence campaign” in the U.S. The indictment lists 16 overt acts of conspiracy and are as headlined as follows:

• May 2015 Meeting in Moscow
• 2015 United Nations Petition
• September 2015 Dialogue of Nations Conference
• 2016 Reparations Tour
• Article Concerning Russian Olympic Team
• 2017 St. Petersburg, Florida Election
• 2018 Demonstration in California
• International Committee for the Protection of Human Rights
• 2019 St. Petersburg, Florida Election
• 2020 Dialogue of Nations Conference
• Reports on U.S. Groups
• 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine
• Social Media Company Protest
• Russian Victory Day Demonstration
• Georgia State Capitol Protest
• Post-Indictment Discussion

The indictment states that starting in 2014, allegedly under the direction and supervision of the FSB, Ionov “recruited members” of different political groups from the U.S. and across the world who attended the anti-colonial and separatist conferences organized by AGMR. Ionov then “entered into partnership” with “U.S. separatist groups” (APSP) and “exercised direction or control over these groups on behalf of the FSB,” according to the charges.

Ionov “provided financial support” and direction to APSP, said the FBI, “to publish pro-Russian propaganda, as well as other information designed to cause dissension in the United States.”

The feds then allege that working with Sukhodolov and Popov in the FSB, Ionov conspired to “interfere directly” with elections in the U.S. They claim the Russians directed the 2019 political campaign of Eritha ‘Akilé’ Cainion, or Akilé Anai, by allegedly sending “450 bucks.“

Anai, who was not indicted and is listed in the indictment as “Unindicted Co-conspirator 4, or UIC-4,” was running for local elections in St. Petersburg, Florida. She’s the Director of Agitation and Propaganda at APSP. Her and Jesse Nevel of the Uhuru 3 made national news in 2017 when they became the first candidates in the world to run on a platform of reparations to the Black community.

Augustus Romain, or Gazi Kodzo, was also indicted. Kodzo had been kicked out of APSP and the Uhuru Movement in 2018. He then started the controversial separatist group Black Hammer. On July 19, 2022, ten days before the FBI raids, his house was the scene of a standoff in which a Black Hammer member committed suicide, and Kodzo and another were arrested. Among many state charges Kodzo faces from the standoff incident, are forced sodomy and kidnapping.

In the federal indictment, Kodzo and Black Hammer are said to have been “acting at the direction or control of, and with funding from, Ionov and AGMR” and “engaged in direct action within the United States to further the interests of Russia in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

Much of the indictments are based off of “electronic messages” sent between Ionov, Hess, Nevel, and Yeshitela.

The indictment states that APSP received two wire payments for $3,476.20 each in February 2016, from Ionov’s AGMR, for travel reimbursements of a four-city reparations tour. Ionov also allegedly reimbursed ~$3,000 for airline tickets to California for Black Hammer members to hold a protest against social media restrictions on Russian content.

Numerous dates of Internet video presentations by APSP in 2022 with ‘pro-Russian discussions’ were noted in the indictment under “2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine” as part of what they allege Ionov called the Russian “information war.”

A portion of the indictment conjured memories of FBI tactics during COINTELPRO when they would pit Black Power groups against each other with fake messages to sow discord. The indictment made sure to showcase that Kodzo, who had previously been kicked out of APSP, was throwing shade to Yeshitela by noting that Kodzo sent Ionov a message reading, “Omali could never do what I do lmao,” and “Black Hammer Party is the vanguard.”

On the charge of conspiring to act as illegal agents of the Russian government (18 U.S.C. § 371—Conspiracy to Defraud the United States), the seven indicted face a maximum of five years in prison. Yeshitela, Hess and Nevel are also being charged with acting as agents of Russia within the United States (18 U.S.C. § 951) in which they each face a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

“They’re not attacking us for lying, they’re attacking us for talking.” – Omali Yeshitela

“We are being charged with a violation of statute 18 U.S.C. § 371–”conspiring to commit an offense against the United States and acting as an agent of a foreign government and foreign officials, to wit, the Russian federation.., without prior notification to the attorney general, as required by law, in violation of 18 USC 951(a).

The use of the 951(a) statute requiring registration as a foreign agent, has been used rarely for indictments in the past 80 years since its adoption into law and exposes the U.S. government’s desperation and lack of any real evidence against the Party. 951(a) has usually been cited in cases of paid lobbyists and those accused of espionage. Ours is a dangerous exception where it is used only for speech by African people fighting for justice, including reparations.” – Penny Hess, ‘Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Uhuru 3 put state on trial in fightback against bogus charges,’ March 29, 2024

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Violent Raids Attack Yeshitela Home, APSP

Using flashbang grenades, drones, laser-lit rifles, battering rams, and phone jammers, FBI agents conducted raids at seven APSP locations simultaneously at dawn on July 29, 2022 including Yeshitela’s home and APSP headquarters in St. Louis and St. Petersburg, Florida.

Yeshitela and the Deputy Chair, Ona Zené Yeshitela, are partners and live together in St. Louis. “I thought they were gonna kill me. They killed Fred Hampton at 4 o’clock in the morning in Chicago in 1969 so I thought they were gonna kill me,” said Omali to a Minneapolis crowd three months after the raid.

Not long after, APSP’s The Burning Spear TV released a video (see below) compiling surveillance footage of the government actions.

The raids, which led to the indictments, are a continuation of attacks on APSP, said their members. They believe this is just another attack in a continuation of a century-long war waged against the Black liberation movement, starting with Marcus Garvey. In 1919, the FBI’s predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation, surveilled and infiltrated Garvey’s six-million-strong UNIA, then later did the same to the Nation of Islam and a gamut of other Black groups, leaders, and people.

The feds are “attacking [them] because of the transformation” they’re making in St. Louis to uplift Black communities with the Black Power Blueprint developments, said Mwezi Odom, Chair of the “Hands off Uhuru! Hands off Africa!” Defense Campaign.

In a live video presentation before the indictments were announced, Odom went over a list of “comprehensive attacks” on APSP from July 2022 to the present. Odom mentioned the following incidents:

• July 2, 2022 – A suspect torched the massive Pan-African flag outside APSP headquarters with a flamethrower. This was 27 days before the raids. Odom said they wondered if that was a “dry run” for the upcoming raid.
• July 29, 2022 – FBI raids several APSP properties and headquarters, confiscating documents, computers, personal items, etc.
• September 2022 – Change.Org removed an ‘Africans Charge Genocide’ petition with over 130,000 signatures.
• October 31, 2022 – Uhuru Movement member, Themba Tshibanda, arrested and held for two weeks in a St. Louis jail where he was questioned by FBI agents about the Uhuru Movement and asked to identify Russians in photographs.
• January 7, 2023 – Sanctuary Church across the street from Yeshitela’s home in St. Louis was set ablaze. The Black Power Blueprint was under contract to purchase the church and had planned to turn the building into a community center with offices.
• February 14, 2023 – Grant for WBPU Black Power 96FM Radio was revoked by Pinellas County Commission. The station has been operating for 27 years as part of APEDF.
• March 2023 – Economic Sanctions: Regions Bank cancels APEDF lines of credit and accounts. GoFundMe froze over $9,000 in donations to the Hands Off Uhuru! Legal Defense Fund. Stripe payment processor blocked contributions to the group and Facebook blocked the ability for crowdfunded campaigns.

Since the 2022 raids, Yeshitela has continued to express that Black Americans haven’t needed Russians to tell them that they are oppressed nor how to feel about the historical ramifications that slavery has had on the U.S., nor how to feel about this country’s record of colonialism and foreign affairs.

“What happened to George Floyd was colonialism in action and that’s how colonialism acts all over the world, and that’s how the FBI acts all over the world,” said Yeshitela during a visit to Minneapolis.

The FBI’s “objective is to silence me, to shut me up, to crush our organization,” Yeshitela said. However, he vowed to continue fighting “for Black people, for Africa, for the liberation of our people, and for the emancipation of humanity.”

Part of the indictment is electoral work which Yeshitela said has always been driven by the struggle of African people and one that he’s always been working on since APSP’s inception. America’s social system is experiencing an “existential crisis,” said Yeshitela, “that’s what sent them to my house in a pre-dawn raid in July. That’s what has them fighting like hell in Ukraine using somebody else’s blood.”

The prosecutors in the federal case are Assistant U.S. Attorneys Daniel J. Marcet and Risha Asokan for the Middle District of Florida, Trial Attorney Menno Goedman of the Justice Department’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, and Trial Attorney Demetrius Sumner of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section. Yeshitela, Nevel, and Hess all face up to 15 years in federal prison if convicted.

Read all of the court documents at the Hands Off Uhuru website.

“If the government convicts Chairman Omali Yeshitela in this case, they will be able to go after any speech by any person at any time.” – Uhuru legal team attorney

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Yeshitela Dismissed by Political Purists

Aside from the networks that APSP has built, support for Yeshitela in the wider left is mostly unseen and absent. Some point to anti-Blackness as a reason; it can also be said that some are simply unaware of Yeshitela.

In the federal case, Yeshitela’s connections to anti-Ukrainian figures, some of whom present right-wing politics in Russia, created an environment of dismissal from political purists in the U.S., particularly after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This form of dismissal isn’t new. After forming the Uhuru Movement in the 70s, APSP faced similar issues with purist white liberals and leftists disagreeing over their intersectional style and adhering to Black leadership. Five decades later, white leftists and liberals, many of whom have no idea of Yeshitela’s decades of Black liberation work, continue the attempts to de-legitimize him.

While there has been a strong cultural shift to decolonize and deprogram the acceptance of white supremacist ideology, many white leftists remain attached to the dominance of their upbringing, putting their views of whiteness in the forefront by all costs. This approach negates the importance of having a nuanced understanding of a society that is built on anti-Blackness.

As APSP continues to build their international movement, the story of Yeshitela and the Uhuru 3 remains largely unknown, forcing Yeshitela to utilize networks such as Tucker Carlson’s to speak about this case.

This indictment is a continuation of centuries of oppression against Black people led by the United States government and one in which features an attack on the ideals of the First Amendment’s freedom of speech. As of now, the trial is expected to start in Tampa, Florida on September 3, 2024.

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Read a past report on Yeshitela’s speech at the 2014 Malcolm X Conference in Minneapolis.

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