Biography: Assata Olugbala Shakur, born JoAnne Deborah Byron, sometimes referred to by her married surname Chesimard, is a former member of the Black Liberation Army, who was convicted, under New Jersey's "aiding and abetting" statute, of the first-degree murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. On November 2, 1979, she escaped from prison, and in 1984, she surfaced in Cuba, where she was granted political asylum.