Canadian family rallies around alleged Black Panther facing U.S. attempted murder charges TORONTO The wife and children of a reputed former Black Panther accused of shooting a Chicago police officer 35 years ago tearfully insisted Wednesday that he is innocent of the U.S. charges against him and should not be extradited. Flanked by her three adult daughters and son, Natercia Coelho said Joseph Pannell, who has lived north of the border under the assumed name Gary Freeman, is a good man who loves his family and deserves to stay in Canada. "Gary Freeman is an innocent man ... One cannot be a fugitive from injustice," Coelho said outside a Toronto courthouse where Pannell appeared at an extradition hearing. Chicago police allege Pannell was a 19-year-old member of the Black Panthers involved in the 1969 shooting of Terrence Knox, a 21-year-old patrolman. Faced with charges of attempted murder and three counts of aggravated battery, Pannell became a fugitive after he was freed on bail in 1973. The Black Panthers, founded in 1966 by activists Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, were revolutionary black nationalists who rejected the integrationist vision of the more mainstream civil rights movement. The Knox shooting occurred at the height of the group's notoriety. Pannell apparently lived in Montreal for several years before moving to Toronto and getting a job at the Toronto Reference Library, where he worked as a researcher for 13 years, eventually marrying a co-worker. Immigration officials caught up with him in July 2004, after the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice asked Canadian authorities to search for matches to Pannell's fingerprints, which were taken when he was arrested in Chicago in 1969. The prints matched those found in Canadian records taken for a customs offense committed by Pannell in 1983. In 1969, when tensions between police and Chicago's African-American community were running high, Pannell was a frightened teenager whose actions were a response to "a violation of civil liberties," his lawyer Julian Falconer was quoted as saying outside the court by The Canadian Press. "This is not a story about violence committed against a police officer; this is a story about violence committed against a culture," Falconer said after a judge adjourned the extradition proceedings until Friday. "The question is whether the Canadian government is going to do the right thing and let this man, who has led a 35-year history here in Canada as a law-abiding citizen, an absolute pillar of the community, go on with his life or send him back to account for what amounts to civil liberties atrocities perpetrated by the United States of America in the late 1960s." 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