TAMPA, Fla. — Jurors reached a verdict Thursday concerning four activists accused of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government and sow division in the country.
Three current members of the Uhuru Movement, African People's Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel, were also accused of acting as foreign agents for Russia and failing to register with the U.S. as such.
Augustus Romain, founder of Atlanta-based Black Hammer and former member of Uhuru, only faced the conspiracy charge.
Jurors found all four defendants guilty of conspiracy. Yeshitela, Hess and Nevel were found not guilty of acting as foreign agents.
"The jury rejected the prosecution's notion that we were working for Russians," Yeshitela told 10 Tampa Bay. "Which meant that they agreed with what we said all along, 'we just work for Black people.'"
The defense said they plan to appeal the conspiracy convictions. The conviction carries a minimum five-year sentence in jail, but attorneys argued there aren't set sentencing guidelines for the conspiracy charge.
No sentencing date has been announced.
"I think that this was a political trial," Hess said after the trial. "It is a political attack."
Yeshitela said he is satisfied the government was unable to convict him and the others on the charge of acting as foreign agents. He said his trip to Moscow funded by the Kremlin in 2015 was something he's done in other countries and they aren't under Russian control.
"We're not pro-Russian," he said. "We are pro-Black, and to the extent that we can win other people to be pro-Black and pro-Black freedom, we will do that. So we went to Russia."
During the trial, prosecutors have said the group’s members acted under Russian direction to stage protests in 2016 claiming Black people have been victims of genocide in the U.S. and took other actions for the following six years that would benefit Russia, including opposition to U.S. policy in the Ukraine war.
The government said the Russians directed Nevel's 2017 campaign for St. Petersburg mayor to undermine U.S. elections.
"Not at all," Nevel said after the trial when asked if he was directed by Russians. "That's something that the U.S. government, the Department of Justice, has been blatantly and openly, shamelessly lying about."
The defense attorneys have said that despite their connections to the Russian organization, the actions taken by the African People’s Socialist Party and Uhuru Movement were aligned precisely with what they have advocated for more than 50 years. Yeshitela founded the organization in 1972 as a Black empowerment group opposed to vestiges of colonialism around the world.
The Associated Press and 10 Tampa Bay's Chris Hurst contributed to this report.