FBI: Tupac Extorted by Jewish Defense League
Image by Wikicommons
Fifteen years after Tupac Shakur’s murder, the FBI has released documents showing that the rapper received death threats from the Jewish Defense League as part of an extortion scheme.
The papers reveal an FBI request for additional time to investigate the matter, with the organization interested in determining “whether the extortionate activities … are in furtherance of the social and/or political goals of the JDL.” They show a scheme in which the League notified the rapper of alleged death threats, then provided “protection services” while working out a “deal” with the supposed threat maker. After receiving money from the musician, the JDL would announce an agreement with the would-be killer, allowing Shakur to return to normal life. The papers don’t show any connection between the JDL and Shakur’s unsolved murder, which occurred in Las Vegas in 1996. Rumors since that time have focused on the so-called East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry of the 1990s, which claimed the life of Shakur rival the Notorious B.I.G. the following year.
The papers show that another rapper, Eazy-E, of hip-hop group N.W.A., had been contacted by the JDL before his 1995 death from AIDS.
While the JDL’s connection to the rap world comes as news, its involvement in criminal activity does not. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the group as “a radical organization” that “has orchestrated countless acts of terrorism in the U.S. and abroad.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
