May 3, 2013, New York - Today, in response to the FBI's adding of former Black Panther Assata Shakur to its "Most Wanted Terrorist" list, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued the following statement:

The FBI’s decision this week to add former Black Panther Assata Shakur to its "Most Wanted Terrorist" list and double the bounty for her capture makes clear the government’s deliberate attempts to criminalize political dissent and intimidate activists. In the 1970’s, the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO targeted and killed leaders of the Black Liberation Movement using tactics later found by Congress to be illegal. Forty years later, the government continues to bend the law to silence dissent, from increased surveillance, to the occupation of Black and Latino communities by aggressive police forces, to the passage of vague and overbroad material support laws and the expanding use of the term terrorist to redefine what should be state-level crimes.  Should the many who support Assata Shakur now expect to be targeted for providing her “material support”?  Now that our government routinely targets and kills people around the world without any due process, what can we expect next?