Assata Shakur, a controversial Black liberation activist who fled to Cuba after escaping a New Jersey prison following a 1977 conviction in the murder of a state trooper, died this week in Havana.

Assata Shakur, the Black Liberationist convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper, who was also Tupac Shakur’s godmother, has died, The New York Times reports.

Shakur maintained her innocence and reappeared in Cuba in 1984 where she was granted asylum by former president Fidel Castro.