On July 22, 2026, oral arguments in the appeal of the landmark Uhuru 3 case will be heard by a panel of three judges at the Elbert P. Tuttle U.S. appeals courthouse in Atlanta, GA.
The appeal was filed in June 2025 on behalf of Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel by the Uhuru 3 legal team: attorneys Leonard Goodman, Ade Griffin, Mutaqee Akbar, Angela Reaney and Tom Inskeep.
In a victory for the struggle for anti-colonial free speech, the historic appeal challenges the partial victory of the 2024 trial, which acquitted the Uhuru 3 of the bogus main charge of failing to register as Russian agents, but convicted them of conspiracy to act as unregistered Russian agents in a nonsensical verdict.
The Uhuru 3 were sentenced to three years of supervised probation and 300 hours of community service, which they rapidly completed. In 2026 the probation was terminated early by the judge.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela defines the struggle for anti-colonial free speech as the right of African and oppressed peoples to enjoy the right to struggle for their national liberation and self-determination.
As Chairman Yeshitela has stated, anti-colonial free speech is the only true guarantee for free speech rights of everyone.
As the Chairman is leading this struggle in a time when voting and other civil rights are under threat from the U.S. government, it is significant that the Uhuru 3 appeal will be held in the Tuttle Appeals Courthouse which was the epicenter of important civil rights cases brought to court during the 1950s and 1960s.
The courthouse is named after Judge Elbert P. Tuttle, a progressive judge who ruled on many important cases during the time when the struggle of African and colonized peoples for political and economic power in their own hands was the main trend in the U.S. and the world.
In 1962, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Albany Appeal was held there. Judge Tuttle’s court heard Dr. King’s appeal challenging a lower court injunction that attempted to prohibit peaceful civil rights demonstrations and meetings in Albany, Georgia.
In 1966 the court ruled in favor of civil rights leader Julian Bond, ordering the Georgia House of Representatives to seat him after white state legislators twice refused to do so because of his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War.
In 1961-62, the uprising of the masses of African people influenced Judge Tuttle to issue rapid-fire rulings to end racial barriers at major universities, including James Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi and the integration of the University of Georgia by Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter.
The courthouse was also the scene of the ruling on Voting Rights and Reapportionment (Gray v. Sanders & Wesberry v. Vandiver), crucial rulings that outlawed Georgia’s discriminatory “county unit” electoral system and paved the way for “one person, one vote” congressional redistricting.
It is fitting that the same court will now be a venue for the powerful political struggle led by Chairman Yeshitela, who continues the fight for the total liberation of African people, a fight represented in the powerful pushback against the brutal U.S. government attacks beginning with full military raids on 7 s homes and properties of the Uhuru Movement in two states on July 29, 2022.
The Chairman has scientifically taught through his theory of African Internationalism that the kidnapping, assault, colonization and oppression of African people is legal under colonialism, but that colonialism itself is illegitimate. It is the continued domination of African people by the settler- colonial U.S. state that is the essence of the social system we live in and the source of the wealth and power of white power.
The Chairman calls this the colonial mode of production.
Over the past four years, the Chairman has built the Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa! Fightback Coalition which has consolidated support for the Uhuru 3 not only throughout the U.S. but throughout Africa, Latin America and Europe.
Through the Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa! Fightback Coalition and the appeal of the case of the Uhuru 3, the struggle led by Chairman Omali Yeshitela for anti-colonial free speech will be etched in the ongoing historic struggle of African people to be free and liberated until victory is won!
All Out to Atlanta for the Oral Arguments!
We are winning!
