An 82-year-old Black liberation leader, and three others, are on trial in a Florida federal court, accused of plotting a scheme with Russian operatives in 2016 to promote the Kremlin’s political interest in the United States through staged protests.
The defendants — Omali Yeshitela, 82, Penny Hess, Jesse Nevel, and Augustus Claudius Romain Jr. — aren’t accused of interfering with the 2016 election. The trial is expected to last a month, the Associated Press reported.
For nearly 60 years, the U.S. government has viewed Black-led political organizations such as the Black Panther Party, Black Lives Matter, and Yeshitela’s African People’s Socialist Party as threats to democracy. Those organizations originated, in part, to provide resources and education, fight for reparations for Black Americans, and protect their Black and brown communities from police brutality and other forms of violence.
Federal prosecutors accuse Yeshitela of traveling to Russia in 2015, where he met with two Russian nationalists. According to the April 2023 indictment, he entered into a partnership with them knowing they were agents for their government. Yeshitela called for unity with Russia, and “the independence of the Russian-occupied Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine,” prosecutors alleged, according to the Associated Press.
Hess, chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, is accused of facilitating communications between Yeshitela and Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, the president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russian, an organization that is funded through Russian grants. Ionov has been indicted in connection with the allegations, too, but is not currently on trial.
Yeshitela’s attorney, Ade Griffin, said in an opening statement that the group shared many goals of a Russian organization called the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia but was not acting under control of that nation’s government, the Associated Press reported.
“They shared some common beliefs,” said Leonard Goodman, who represents Hess. “That makes them threatening.”
Prosecutors allege that in 2022, Romain Jr., a leader of the Black Hammer Party, acted at the direction and with funding from Ionov to engage “in direct action with in the United States to further the interests of Russia in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine … including opposition to U.S. policy in the Ukraine war,” according to the indictment.
Nevel, chairman of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, ran an unsuccessful campaign for mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida, and is accused of spreading Russian propaganda.
Yeshitela, Hess, and Nevel each face up to 15 years in prison if convicted on conspiracy and foreign agent registration charges. Romain faces up to five years in prison if convicted on a foreign agent registration charge.