DATELINE–Department of Corrections

African-American activists have seized upon a little known ancillary protocol to the 1949 Geneva Convention to secure the release of Geronimo Pratt, a Black Panther who had been held in captivity by the state of California for over 27 years.

Using the obscure “One out, One in” clause, African-American activists were able to secure the emancipation of Pratt by arranging for the simultaneous incarceration of Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh, who was found guilty of 160 counts of murder in the Oklahoma City bombing trial, was sentenced to death late last week. By admitting McVeigh into the correctional system, federal authorities had no choice but to release the long-time political prisoner Geronimo Pratt.

But how could such a stunning swap take place within the hallowed halls of the American legal system?

The answer lies with a coalition of African-American scholars who have aimed an unlikely weapon at the U.S. penal system: the weight of history.

History on their side.

Since 1987, a group of prominent African-American citizens, including several international relations experts and labor historians, have studied the prospect of filing a claim against the U.S. government in an international court of law. In this unusual collaboration between Black activists, academics, and the legal establishment, reparations are being sought on behalf of African-American descendants of U.S.-held slaves.

It was in the course of their research that the team’s legal counsel discovered a precedent that establishes an upper cap on the number of political prisoners that can be detained at any one time by signatories to the Geneva Convention:

When the population of prisoners of war interned by a State exceeds the limit established in article 18.7, prisoners of war must be released in order to bring the state in accordance with agreed upon political prisoner population goals… Prisoners of war must be set at liberty in the order of their incarceration.

Due to the nature of their trials, both Geronimo Pratt and Timothy McVeigh are considered political prisoners. Pratt, having been imprisoned nearly three decades ago was the logical beneficiary of McVeigh’s sentencing last week.

A tale of two nationalists.

Geronimo Pratt, a Vietnam veteran and Black Panther activist, was imprisoned in 1970 for allegedly murdering a white woman on a tennis court in Santa Monica, Calif. Surprisingly, Pratt was convicted of the Santa Monica murder even though federal agents could verify that he was present at a Black Panther gathering in Oakland, Calif., at the time in question.

It was well known that Pratt was under continuous federal surveillance at the time that he allegedly committed murder in Santa Monica.

Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran and militia activist, was arrested in April of 1995 for murdering 168 people (including 8 federal agents and 19 children) in conjunction with the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. Convicted two weeks ago on 160 counts of murder, McVeigh was sentenced to the death penalty on Friday the 13th of June, 1997.

In McVeigh’s case, the jury voted unanimously to impose the death penalty despite such mitigating factors as: the massacre of 72 Waco Branch Dividians at the hands of ATF and FBI agents, the murders of two white separatists at Ruby Ridge by FBI agents, the failure of the FBI and ATF to accept responsibility for said mishaps resulting in homicide of civilians, and McVeigh’s exemplary war time service in the U.S. Army.

McVeigh’s trial and, specifically, the jury’s decision to consider the above incidents as mitigating factors, mark the first public acknowledgments of federal wrongdoing in recent standoffs between White nationalists and the U.S. government.

While typical penalty phase mitigating factors would focus on such circumstances as a history of mental illness in the family, mental retardation, and/or victimization by sexual abuse, McVeigh’s defense arguments centered on his military service and the “recent imposition of martial law.”

A tearful homecoming and a boisterous bon voyage.

In the wake of last week’s simultaneous condemnation and emancipation, American families in Oakland and Oklahoma City, alike, find themselves searching for closure.

Unlike the strong-arm tactics routinely used by the U.S. government 30 years ago to quell such troubling political movements as the Black Panther party and the Anti-War movement, today’s “feds” appear unable to address the increasingly violent tone of contemporary political dissent.

At the time of Pratt’s arrest, political leaders throughout the country were being forced into hiding or exile at the hands of over-zealous and often paranoid law enforcement agencies. In eight years, when McVeigh is finally executed on prime time television, it is unlikely that any of his supporters will be frightened by that spectacle of federal might.

Instead, McVeigh will become a martyr. For unlike Pratt and other Black Panthers who have become unknowns in their community after being imprisoned for three decades, McVeigh’s case of swift and melodramatic justice will guarantee his place in the right wing’s pantheon of fallen heroes. No one knows what the future holds for Geronimo Pratt, but there can be no doubt that America’s fate is now bound, hand and foot, to Timothy McVeigh.

Is Bubba gonna take the bullet for the body politic? Will there ever again be a unified nation state in North America?

Against a somber backdrop of chronic low voter turnout, a government plagued by scandals, the rise of separatist militias, and Americans’ increasing distaste for the public life, ours destined to become an age of political executions.

We will once again be one nation, under God and indivisible – at the gallows.