1960's Community Activist Joseph Pannell Fights Cold Case & Extradition

There is no plaque on the house at 2337 West Monroe St. on Chicago's West Side, except one that says: ``No soliciting, no loitering, no trespassing.'' But neighbours here don't need a sign to be reminded of why it is so infamous. It was here, before 5 a.m. on Dec. 4, 1969, that Illinois Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed in what the Chicago Tribune called ``the most famous or notorious police raid in Chicago's history.'' Hampton was shot twice in the head while lying in his bed and West Side residents are still quick to label his death in a hail of police bullets murder. The revolutionary Panthers died out more than a quarter-century ago, but the group's leaders are still warmly remembered in this neighbourhood. And while Hampton was a familiar face on West Monroe, his next-door neighbours say they say they have no memory of a 55-year-old Toronto librarian linked in media reports to the Illinois Black Panthers. Joseph Pannell has been in custody since his gunpoint arrest last July outside the Toronto Reference Library near Yonge and Bloor Sts. For the past 13 years, Pannell has lived in Toronto with his Canadian wife and their children, under the name Gary Douglas Freeman. Now he is fighting extradition to the United States, where he faces charges of attempted murder and aggravated battery stemming from the March 7, 1969 shooting of Chicago police cadet Terrence Knox. His extradition hearing is scheduled for May 2 in Toronto. The pursuit of Pannell, who twice skipped bail in the 1970s, has consumed the former police officer. ``Please send him back here so that I can have my day in court,'' said Knox, in a telephone interview. Thirty-six years ago, at a time when Chicago was a crucible of racial tension, the Pannell case received scant media coverage. It originally rated just three paragraphs on an inside page of the Tribune, with no allegation of a connection to the militant Panthers. But the reopening of what one Chicago investigator has called the coldest of cold cases is raising disturbing questions of race, politics and power.  [more]

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