MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th July, 2023) US President Joe Biden has failed to live up to his 2020 campaign promise to free hundreds of Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporters from jail, Russian human rights activist Alexander Ionov told Sputnik.
"Democrats have betrayed the BLM. During Biden's election campaign, vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris met with activists... She promised them that if Biden won the presidency he would free or pardon more than 400 BLM supporters, held at state prisons without charges. They are still behind bars," Ionov said.
Thousands were arrested across the United States in 2020 as mass protests against racism and discrimination in US police swept the country in the wake of George Floyd's death.
Ionov, the president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), said Omali Yeshitela, the 81-year-old veteran leader of the African People's Socialist Party (APSP), attended the meeting with Harris. Yeshitela now faces up to 10 years in jail on charges of conspiring with Ionov to participate in Russia's alleged influence campaign and act as its agent in the US.
Ionov said that Biden had also failed to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which resulted in numerous arrests of migrants on the US-Mexican border under the Trump administration.
The Department of Justice has offered a $10 million reward for evidence of meddling by Ionov or his alleged APSP associates. The indictment claims that Ionov helped fund a protest tour in 2016 in support of a petition criticizing the "genocide" of African people in the United States and directed the political campaign of a candidate for local office in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2019.
