Biography
Akil Al-Jundi (born Herbert Scott Dean in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands) was sentenced to life for murder in 1961 and sent to Attica, where he became a leader during the September 1971 prison uprising and was among those guarding the hostages in D-Yard; he was shot in the hand and face during the New York State Police retaking on September 13, 1971. He became the lead named plaintiff in the landmark civil-rights class action Al-Jundi v. Rockefeller (later Al-Jundi v. Mancusi), filed in 1974 on behalf of roughly 1,200 Attica survivors, which settled in 2000 for $8 million to the plaintiff class. After his 1976 parole he became a respected paralegal and prisoners' rights advocate. He died of complications from diabetes on August 13, 1997.
The March 1973 Attica News roster prints Herbie Scott X Deane (Akil) among the uprising prisoner defendants, linked to indictment 18: kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment and coercion. The table lists maximum statutory exposure, not sentences actually imposed or time served; no custody dates or duration are inferred. Physical page 8 prints his argument against kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment and coercion accusations, signed Herbert Scott X. Deane, aka Akil Al-Jundi. This verifies an additional printed name form within the existing identity, not another prisoner. Source: https://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/Attica/510.Prisons.AtticaNewsVol1No1.pdf#page=6
Akil Al-Jundi coauthored the 1978 booklet Attica: Then and Now, Still Fighting Back. In its epilogue, he identified himself as one of the sixty-two Attica indictees and as a community and prison activist. He called for community discussion of crime prevention, alternatives to imprisonment, rehabilitation, institutional racism, and the relationship between work and the prison system, placing prisoners’ rights organizing within a broader liberation movement.
