Source: Mumia hospitalized for 'life-threatening condition'

A MAN who was on death row for years may now be at death's door.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, the convicted killer of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, was taken to Schuylkill Medical Center in Pottsville early yesterday, according to Noelle Hanrahan, a spokeswoman for Prison Radio, an online media outlet that works with Abu-Jamal.

Hanrahan told the Daily News from the hospital - not far from the State Correctional Institution at Mahanoy, where Abu-Jamal was incarcerated - that none of Abu-Jamal's family, including his brother, Keith Cook, were allowed into the intensive-care unit to see him.

The hospital's staff also refused to disclose any information about his condition, citing a mandate from the state Department of Corrections, according to Hanrahan.

Hanrahan said that Abu-Jamal had been suffering from "a life-threatening condition" for the past six weeks. She was unable to elaborate on the ailment, she said, because Abu-Jamal hadn't been given "a proper diagnosis" from the prison medical staff.

In other words, no one cose to him knows why he's sick.

Susan McNaughton, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections, told the Daily News in an email yesterday that she couldn't comment "on inmate hospitalizations or medical conditions."

She also advised a reporter to "obtain information by contacting his attorney/attorneys."

But Bret Grote, Abu-Jamal's attorney, told the Associated Press that he wasn't provided any information, either.

When informed of this by the Daily News, McNaughton said that only the inmate's next of kin, who doesn't necessarily have to be a blood relative, would have that information.

Abu-Jamal - whose birth name is Wesley Cook - killed Faulkner in 1981. A former journalist and Black Panther activist, Abu-Jamal has incessantly maintained his innocence and filed numerous appeals, all of which have been denied. He's serving a life sentence.

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