Tupac Shakur’s stepfather and freedom fighter, Mutulu Shakur, whose real name is Jeral Wayne Williams has spent 34 years in jail after he was sentenced to 60 years in prison on May 11th, 1988 after alleged reports of him leading The Family (A black revolutionary group) that robbed the Brinks company armoured truck of 2 million USD and killed three security officers; two Nyack Policemen, Waverly Brown and Edward O’Grady, Peter Paige, a security officer from the company, at a mall in New York City, in 1981.
Mutulu was born August 8th, in Baltimore, Maryland. He married Tupac’s mother in 1975, but they divorced in 1982, a year after the New York robbery. He became the most wanted on FBI list till he was arrested in 1986 in Los Angeles, was tried a year after and was handed 60 years in 1988.
During Mutulu Shakur’s trial, he was accused of helping Assata – Tupac’s aunt, and also a freedom fighter, (sentenced to life in jail over the assassination of a Trooper, in New Jersey, 1973) in her prison break. According to reports, members of The Family went for a visit to the New Jersey State Prison, armed. They reportedly captured two correctional officers and escaped with Assata in a prison van. Mutulu was accused of guarding the escape track, although he pleaded not guilty and his lawyer challenged that no evidence shows Mutulu Shakur’s involvement.
Assata after the escape went to Cuba gaining political asylum and has lived for more than three decades to date.
During his teenage, Mutulu became a member of the Revolutionary Action Movement, and the Black Separatist Movement, the Republic of New Afrika. Mutulu was working with the Lincoln Detox program where he treated addicts with Acupuncture and Methadone in 1970; he was licensed and certified in 1976 to practice Acupuncture in California. He formed the Harlem Institute of Acupuncture and the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America.
He was also a member of the Black Liberation Army with a circle of members called “The Family” who source their campaign of self-determination for the Blacks through robberies.
He was diagnosed with threatening bone cancer and other health failures, and was scheduled for a release on February 2016 but was held back until May 26th, 2026.
In 2018, Mutulu filed a lawsuit against the U.S government for illegal detainment in prison. He lamented that were using his Constitutional First Amendment rights against his release.
According to the lawsuit;
“The commission has failed to adopt or apply any known standards on the meaning of frequent rule violations. A handful of old telephone rule violations over 30 years do not show Plaintiff frequently violated prison rules or is likely to re-offend If released on parole.”
Before the court filing, Mutulu Shakur went for a parole hearing in 2016 but was denied because of a single positive drug test that he failed almost thirty years before the parole according to reports.
Family and friends of the 70-year-old freedom fighter are demanding for his release due to his health condition; they believe Mutulu has become a positive force for good and anti-violence throughout his decades of incarceration.
Reading on his website, his family and friends said; “The acts of which Dr Shakur was convicted some thirty years ago were committed in the context of a movement seeking equal opportunities for black people who, it is widely conceded, were suffering catastrophically from disenfranchisement, segregation, poverty and exclusion from many of the fundamental necessities that make life worth living.”
The petition reads;
“We strongly support the parole and immediate, compassionate release for Dr Mutulu Shakur. We are confident that his release poses no danger to our communities, and we urge you to allow him to rejoin his family and friends.”
