Overview

• Cuba’s foreign ministry said she died on September 25 from health conditions and advanced age, a fact her daughter also confirmed.
• Shakur, born Joanne Deborah Chesimard, was convicted in 1977 for crimes tied to a 1973 New Jersey shootout that left Trooper Werner Foerster dead.
• She escaped from New Jersey’s Clinton Correctional Facility in 1979 in a Black Liberation Army operation and later received asylum in Cuba in 1984.
• The FBI placed her on its Most Wanted Terrorists list in 2013—the first woman on the list—and maintained a $1 million reward as recently as May 2025.
• Her status was a persistent point of tension between Washington and Havana, drawing public criticism from U.S. officials such as Marco Rubio; she was also rapper Tupac Shakur’s godmother.