By PHILIP MARCELO, Associated Press

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, her daughter and the Cuban government said.

Shakur, who was born Joanne Deborah Chesimard, died Thursday in the capital city of Havana due to “health conditions and advanced age,” Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement . Shakur’s daughter, Kakuya Shakur, also confirmed her mother’s death in a Facebook post.

Shakur’s case had long been a thorny issue in the fraught relations between the U.S. and Cuba. American authorities, including President Donald Trump during his first term in office , had demanded her return from the communist

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