WASHINGTON - May 5 - Award-winning author and death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal's recent book,' We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party' (South End Press 2004) was confiscated on April 16, 2004 by the Security Threat Group Coordinator of the Indiana Department of Correction of Pendleton, Indiana, and denied to Zolo Agona Azania, a black nationalist prisoner who has been on and off Indiana's Death Row since 1981.

According to the Department of Correction form, the basis for the confiscation was the book's chapter six, "The Empire Strikes Bank: COINTELPRO." Mr. Abu-Jamal, who, like Mr. Azania, is on Death Row and wrote the confiscated chapter using information from published and available documents--many of them made public in the 1976 Church Committee congressional hearings--writes about the perils of the government using secrecy to hide their Constitutional violations. According to Mr. Abu-Jamal, "Apparently, for the State of Indiana, COINTELPRO, which occurred between 1956 and 1974 (formally, at least) is a state secret in 2004! Indianans are forbidden from accessing such data, for to do so is a 'security threat.'" Mumia Abu-Jamal was put in punitive detention for writing his first book, Live from Death Row.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is National Vice President of Jailhouse Lawyers of the National Lawyers Guild .

Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild said: "For over two decades Mumia Abu-Jamal has been locked alone in a cell 23 hours a day with prison authorities monitoring his every movement. It confounds common sense that his most recent book, We Want Freedom, should be deemed a security threat as the information contained in it is public and even available to someone with as little access as this talented and highly monitored journalist. The National Lawyers Guild is curious to see if talking about COINTELPRO will soon be illegal for the general public."

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