On Friday September 26, 2025, Cuba’s ministry of foreign affairs confirmed that Joanne Chesimard, better known as Assata Shakur, had passed away the previous afternoon at the age of 78 from “health conditions and advanced age.”
Shakur, a former Black Liberation Army militant and fugitive of U.S. justice on the FBI’s most wanted list for breaking out of a New Jersey prison in 1979 and fleeing to Cuba in 1984 after being convicted by an all-white jury for the 1973 murder of New Jersey State Trooper Woerner Foerster, was, at once, a heroine to many Americans who lauded her fight for racial justice and equality, and a “cop killer” to others who felt she evaded accountability for her actions.
In Cuba, where Shakur was granted political asylum and lived a relatively quiet life for over four decades, she is known for being among the main reasons why the island has been listed by the United States as a state sponsor of terrorism (SSOT). To those ends, she has been referenced by name—along with other aging U.S. fugitives purportedly living on the island—in speeches by President Trump, communiqués from the State Department, and statements by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other prominent Republican lawmakers in Congress.
Before the Obama administration in 2015 moved to rescind Cuba’s state sponsor of terrorism designation, it added Shakur to the FBI’s “top ten most wanted terrorists list,” making her the first woman to be included on that list and raising the reward for information leading to her return to the U.S. from $1 to $2 million. Shakur’s ongoing presence in Cuba, even while she posed no direct threat to U.S. national security, became a major sticking point for New Jersey politicians in their conversations with the Obama administration over its historic decision to normalize diplomatic relations with Havana.
Upon the death of such a prominent figure in the history of U.S.-Cuba relations, ACERE reiterates its call for the State Department to initiate a serious, depoliticized and objective review of Cuba’s SSOT designation, which we are confident will lead the federal government to conclude, as the Biden administration did in January this year and the Obama administration did in 2015, that there is no credible evidence that Cuba supports international terrorism.
To be clear, Shakur was never accused or convicted of committing acts of terrorism under U.S. law, nor did the alleged crime she carried out—for which she maintained her innocence—meet the criteria for “international terrorism” described in the relevant legal statutes underpinning the SSOT designation.
The purported murder of a New Jersey State trooper, while reprehensible, constitutes less an act of “international terrorism” than an instance of political violence at a time when civil rights and Black liberation struggles were being waged, and repressed, in the U.S. and elsewhere. In fact, Shakur later expressed her condolences for the death of Foerster, and remorse that her presence on the island contributed to Cuba’s terrorist blacking, telling CNN’s Patrick Oppmann in 1998, “I know they use me to punish Cuba and I am sorry for that.”
The last fugitive of U.S. justice that Cuba received, Nehanda Abiodun, arrived on the island 35 years ago, in 1990, and died there in 2019. It remains unclear how many of the “at least 11” other fugitives cited by the State Department to be allegedly living in Cuba remain on the island or are still alive, and aside from a handful of cases—none of whom have been charged with or convicted of carrying out acts of international terrorism—a detailed list of those individuals has not been made public.
The second main reason cited by Trump administration officials at the time of Cuba’s state-sponsor re-designation in 2021—the presence of commanders of Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN) on the island—similarly fails to meet the statutory criteria for the SSOT designation. For years, Cuba has, among other countries like Norway, responded to the Colombian government’s explicit request to facilitate peace talks with the six-decade-old leftist insurgent group, strictly following the agreed-upon protocols by the negotiating parties regarding the presence of the group’s leadership on—and departure from—the island. After Colombian President Gustavo Petro broke off the most recent round of talks with the ELN and reactivated arrest warrants for its leaders in January 2025, Cuban authorities confirmed that no ELN leaders remained on the island.
For many experts and former U.S. government officials, the ongoing designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism has no basis in the law and instead represents a political label intended to further isolate the country and deprive it of much-needed resources. The designation has dried up Cuba’s financial and commercial relations, dissuaded European tourists from traveling to the island, hampered humanitarian shipments to the island, and caused headaches for Cubans abroad trying to open bank accounts or send money to relatives on the island. Major U.S. allies in Europe and Latin America have urged the U.S. government to lift the unfounded designation, as have more than one hundred members of Congress, along with the city councils of Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York City, and other large U.S. cities.
Upon the death of Assata Shakur, ACERE reiterates its call for the Trump administration to respect the letter and the spirit of U.S. law by rescinding Cuba’s place on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, not only because there is now one less reason to keep it listed, but because there was never enough credible evidence to have Cuba on the list in the first place.
