Montreal Picket in Solidarity with Gary Freeman

On the biting cold evening of January 17, 2006, Solidarity Across Borders joined with the Friends and Family of Gary Freeman at a picket outside Justice Minister Irwin Cotler’s riding office in Cote-des-Neiges.


Gary Freeman (Joseph Pannell) is the subject of a United States extradition request resulting from a 1969 incident in Chicago in which a police officer was injured. He is an innocent man who acted in self-defense. Gary Freeman fled a racial climate where black community activists and organizations were targeted for elimination by the FBI’s COINTELPRO under director J. Edgar Hoover. As a young African-American involved in an incident with police, Gary Freeman would not have received a fair trial, and like many other Americans, he decided to start his life over again in Canada. More information about Gary’s case is available at http://www.freemandrum.org