Assata Shakur, a Black liberation activist who was given political asylum in Cuba after her 1979 escape from a U.S. prison where she had been serving a life sentence for killing a police officer, has died. The Cuban government said Friday that Shakur died Thursday in Havana due to “health conditions and advanced age.” Shakur’s case had long been a thorny issue in the fraught relations between the U.S. and Cuba. Shakur was convicted in the 1973 death of Trooper Werner Foerster during a gunfight after a traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. She was sentenced to life in prison but escaped and eventually fled to Cuba.