by Rosalind D. Muhammad
Foreign Correspondent

PARIS--The widow of French President Fran�ois Mitterrand has appealed to France to support an international effort to free U.S. death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal.

In an act unprecedented by a current or a former first lady of France, Danielle Mitterrand challenged the French to put pressure on President Bill Clinton and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge to halt Mr. Abu-Jamal�s impending execution.

She called Mr. Abu-Jamal�s death sentence racist.

Mrs. Mitterrand and other death penalty opponents have stepped up their visibility on the international front in an effort to stave off the scheduled Dec. 2 execution of Mr. Abu-Jamal in Pennsylvania.

It was Mr. Abu-Jamal�s jailhouse writings about the U.S. justice system, coupled with his efforts to win a new trial that propelled him into the international spotlight.

Mrs. Mitterrand made her plea Oct. 19 as a guest on France 2�s nightly national news telecast.

"I see the days passing and it is only 40 days ... to save Mumia�s life," Mrs. Mitterrand told anchorman Claude S�rillon. "Why is it so important for us (to get involved)? Because Mumia has always claimed his innocence" and did not receive a fair trial, she said.

Mr. Abu-Jamal was convicted in 1982 for the murder of a white Philadelphia police officer. His death warrant was signed by Gov. Ridge on Oct. 13 after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down a request for a new trial. Lawyers are appealing the state conviction to federal courts.

Mrs. Mitterrand called Mr. Abu-Jamal a political prisoner and quickly summarized his history with the Black Panther Party and his outspoken political views beginning at age 15, which she said gave rise to FBI pursuit of him.

As a former radio journalist, Mr. Abu-Jamal gave "sa voix aux sans voix (his voice to the voiceless)," she said. She also said that principally "Blacks, and the Indians and poor Americans" are condemned to U.S. prisons or executed on death row.

Mrs. Mitterrand said she was treated with "insolence" by state officials during her April visit to Pennsylvania to visit Mr. Abu-Jamal on lock down.

She asked the public to support an Oct. 23 major march on behalf of Mr. Abu-Jamal near the U.S. Embassy at the Place de la Madeleine in Paris.

Julia Wright, head of the International Concerned Family and Friends for Mumia Abu-Jamal�s Paris branch, called Mrs. Mitterrand�s stance historic.

"We know of no former first lady to go on national television to ask people to demonstrate for an American prisoner, let aside a Black American prisoner," Ms. Wright said in a telephone interview with The Final Call from her Paris home. "This is very unusual."

According to British author Jonathan Fenby, Mrs. Mitterrand has shown lasting concern for human rights throughout her life.

In his 1998 book "On the Brink: The Trouble with France," which provides a social analysis of modern France, Mr. Fenby wrote that as a high-school girl during World War II, Mrs. Mitterrand had hidden French Resistance fighters opposed to the Nazi occupation of France at ultimate risk to herself.

She was married to her husband nearly 52 years upon his death in January 1996 from prostate cancer. President Mitterrand abolished the death penalty in France in 1981.

Ms. Wright, 57, daughter of the late Black American author Richard Wright, was raised in France from childhood, when her father in 1947 was invited by the French government to live here. She has struggled for years to free Mr. Abu-Jamal, and regularly travels to Philadelphia where she works with MOVE member Pam Africa, she said.

On Oct. 20, Ms. Wright led a "Free Mumia" demonstration with about 75 protesters near the American Consulate at Place de la Concorde in Paris. Police, as usual, cordoned off protesters to prevent them from approaching the consulate.

Since 1995, except for very harsh weather, she and others have staged weekly protest demonstrations there each Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., said Ms. Wright said she visits Mr. Abu-Jamal "three or four times" a year; her last visit was Sept. 1.

"He obviously knew what was coming up," Ms. Wright said. "He was prepared for it mentally. He was very serene, very poised, very focused."

Mr. Abu Jamal maintains he was framed by officers and never received a fair trial because of a biased judge, an incompetent lawyer and witness coercion by police. His opponents say he was rightly convicted for killing a police officer.