Nov. 26, 2014
HARLEM — A Black Panther who spent the last 30 years behind bars for his role in the deadly Brinks armored car robbery and for trying to kill six police officers during a Queens shootout was welcomed out of prison by family and friends at the National Black Theater Tuesday evening.
Sekou Odinga, 70, also known as Nathaniel Burns, a leading member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army during the late 1960s, was paroled Tuesday from Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in upstate New York.
Police arrested Odinga for attempted murder in 1981 after a shootout in Queens with six officers, which investigators believe was related to the robbery of the armored Brinks car. The Oct. 20, 1981 heist at the Nanuet Mall left two police officers and a security guard dead.
Odinga was carrying a license plate that had been linked to the Brinks robbery and police officers found a bullet from the gun of one of the officers killed that day, according to media reports at the time.
Odinga was also accused of springing fellow BLA member Assata Shakur, who was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper, from a New Jersey prison. He was convicted of both crimes in 1984.
For friends who think of Odinga as a freedom fighter, Tuesday was a moment of celebration.
“It’s an emotional day for us,” said Yaseem Sutton, 64, a Black Panther who frequently visited Odinga in prison. “I think you can compare it to Nelson Mandela being released.” But for law enforcement officials, Odinga’s release was a bitter pill to swallow.
“Society says he has paid his dues, but this reminds me of letting al-Qaida members out of jail and they immediately join ISIS,” said Kenneth Maxwell, former FBI case agent on the Brinks robbery case.
Nathaniel Burns was a Black Panther, and also the late brother-in-law of Bernardine Dohrn was named W. Haywood Burns, a lawyer that defended the Black Panthers, coincidence?
Above photo: Haywood Burns (second from right) with client Angela Davis (center), and fellow NLG defense attorney Margaret Burham (far left) during 1972 trial.
W. Haywood Burns, 55, Dies; Law Dean and Rights Worker