US v. 'Uhuru Three' federal trial to begin next week in Tampa • Florida Phoenix

Next week, the U.S. government will begin trial in federal court in Tampa against three members of a St. Petersburg-based black nationalist group, accused of acting as illegal agents of the Russian government without notifying the attorney general.

Omali Yeshitela is the long-time leader of the African People's Socialist Party, also known as the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement, which has been based in St. Petersburg since 1972 (with branches in St. Louis and Oakland).

Along with two members of the party's “Solidarity Front,” Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel, “the Uhuru Three,” as they call themselves, were indicted in April 2023 along with another U.S. citizen and three Russian nationals on charges of conducting a multi-year foreign “malicious influence campaign” in the United States on behalf of the Russian government and in cooperation with Russia's domestic intelligence service (FSB).

The three Uhuru members held a press conference at their party headquarters in southern St. Petersburg on Wednesday, where they protested their innocence and ridiculed the evidence the US government has gathered against them.

“It is first and foremost an attack on the African liberation movement and an attack on the black community itself,” said 34-year-old Nevel, who, like Hess, is white. “A continuation of the U.S. government's historic attacks on the black struggle for self-determination and independence.”

The case

The facts of the case, as presented by the government, begin with a Russian citizen named Alexsandr Victorovich Inovov, who, in cooperation with FSB officials,, allegedly used members of various US political groups as foreign agents of Russia. The indictment alleges that in 2013, Inovov began hosting conferences with Russia's anti-globalization movement that were funded by the Russian government.

According to the indictment, after attending a conference in Moscow in 2015, the Uhurus entered into a “partnership” with Ionov to “publish pro-Russian propaganda and other information aimed at sowing discord in the United States and promoting separatist ideologies.”

Hess, 78, said on Wednesday that the case was an attack on freedom of expression because nowhere in the indictment does it claim that the party had ever committed “anything like murder, fraud or theft or anything like that.”

“Yes, he spoke in Russia,” she said of Yeshitela's attendance at the conference, as listed in the indictment. “He spoke in Spain. He spoke all over Europe. He spoke in many, many places in Africa, in Jamaica, just all over the world.”

Yeshitela, 82, was the last to speak at the news conference. He became angry and at times emotional as he questioned the rationale that he was somehow influenced by the Russians. He said what influenced his political views was the racism he experienced and endured as a black man growing up in Florida in the pre-civil rights era.

“Did the Russians shape me?” he asked. “What shaped my experience? St. Petersburg, Florida, shaped my experience in the beginning. The St. Petersburg Times [where he worked for a time as a reporter; now the Tampa Bay Times]shaped my experience in the beginning. Just living as a black man living under constant terror. I was the same age as Emmitt Till when they murdered Emmitt Till,” he said, referring to the 14-year-old black boy who was kidnapped and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of insulting a white woman in her family's grocery store.

“I was there when the civil rights movement was gaining momentum! And I was there when black people were being pressure washed. When black people just wanted to vote. Black children, black people, just wanted Joe Biden's [Democratic] Party! That shaped my understanding. Not Russia!”

'Wedges'

In its indictment, the German government points out that one of the foreign policy goals of the Russian government is to expand its sphere of influence and that the agents therefore took targeted action against the USA and other states.

The indictment says Russia sought to “forge wedges that undermine confidence in democratic processes, hinder democratization efforts, weaken U.S. partnerships with its European allies, undermine Western sanctions, promote anti-American and anti-Western political views, and thwart efforts to integrate Ukraine and other former Soviet states into European and international institutions.”

The Uhurus have long been critical of the US government and its foreign policy. Their work programme dates back to 1979 and calls for the release of all imprisoned black people, the withdrawal of police “from our oppressed and exploited communities” and the payment of reparations to Africa and the African people by the US government and “the international European ruling class”.

The indictment states that FSB officers “monitored Ionov's efforts to actively manage the campaign of a candidate for local political office in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2019.”

The indictment does not list candidates or races. Over the years, members of the Uhuru movement have run for local office several times. Yeshitela himself ran for mayor of St. Petersburg in 2001, finishing fifth in a field of nine candidates. Nevel ran for mayor in 2017, receiving 1.7% of the vote. Another member of the group, Eritha Akile Cainion, who now goes by the name Akile Anai, ran for city council in 2017 and 2019.

Ahead of the trial, the group is planning a rally and march in front of its headquarters in southern St. Petersburg on Saturday morning.

The trial begins Tuesday, September 3, in federal court in Tampa. Organizers who will be in attendance include Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. If convicted, the Uhuru 3 could face up to 15 years in prison, they say.