About

Paul Magnarella is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Middle East Studies from Harvard University, as well as a J.D. from the University of Florida Levin College of Law. His academic background combines expertise in anthropology and law, which informs his research and teaching. As a faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, he is involved in interdisciplinary research projects and contributes to the academic community through his scholarly work. His role emphasizes the integration of anthropological perspectives with legal and criminological issues, although specific details of his research focus and contributions are not provided in the page text.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• History
• Philosophy
• Sociology
• Advertising
• Economic history
• Criminology

Selected publications

• Inside the Battle of Algiers: Memoir of a Woman Freedom Fighter by Zohra Drif

  Journal of global south studies · 2021-09-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Reviewed by: Inside the Battle of Algiers: Memoir of a Woman Freedom Fighter by Zohra Drif Paul J. Magnarella, Emeritus Drif, Zohra. Inside the Battle of Algiers: Memoir of a Woman Freedom Fighter. Translated by Andrew Farrand. Charlottesville, VA: Just World Books, 2017. Zohra Drif's memoir, first published in French in 2013, describes her early life and time in the Algerian resistance to French colonial rule. She wrote this memoir at age eighty-two because she wanted to justify her killing of European civilians during Algeria's war of independence. She is convinced that such violence was the only option. Zohra was born in 1934 in the small Algerian city of Tiaret to an Algerian Muslim family. She says that her life involved two struggles: one against French colonialism, which degraded Algerians, and the other against Arab tribal conservatism, which strictly limited women's roles. Her father, a qadi (Islamic judge), was atypically progressive in that he wanted his daughter to have a first-class education. Consequently, Zohra attended a French lycée and university in Algiers. She became fluent in French and knowledgeable of French ways of dressing and acting. From her early years she resented the French occupation and longed for Algerian independence. French colonial rule over regions of present-day Algeria began in 1830 and lasted until just after the Algerian War of Independence concluded in 1962. Algeria had attracted hundreds of thousands of European immigrants, many [End Page 428] from the poorer sections of Spain, Italy, and France. Some were criminal and political deportees from France. In 1953 the one million settlers, known as colons or pieds noirs, dominated a Muslim population of about nine million. Europeans owned about 66 percent of the arable land. The grands colons controlled much of Algeria's manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and trade. Algerians were appalled and angered by the ways the French military, police, and ultras (armed French citizens) terrorized the Muslim population. The many illegal acts committed by the French against the Algerians included beatings, torture by electroshock, waterboarding, home demolition, starvation, sexual assault, and rape. The French military had even reintroduced the guillotine. As a twenty-year-old law student, Zohra initiated contact with the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN; National Liberation Front) shortly after the Algerian War of Independence had begun. In the beginning, she and her female cohorts secretly delivered letters to the families of Algerian fighters living in Algiers. Later, they clandestinely transported bombs for FLN members. Because of the brutality of the French occupation, Zohra and the FLN felt justified in retaliating against French noncombatants. They targeted citizen soft targets. Zohra herself planted a bomb in the Milk Bar, a popular French café. Its explosion killed and maimed many. She and her partners believed God was on their side. However, FLN violence against French citizens compelled the French military, police, and ultras to unleash even greater violence against Muslim Algerians, causing more suffering and death. Both sides violated humanitarian law, although the French did so on a larger scale. Zohra expresses no regret for either the French citizens or the Muslim Algerians who were killed during the war of national liberation. She writes that the French died because they represented the evils of settler colonialism; Algerian deaths, she says, were part of the price paid for Algeria to gain independence. French authorities arrested Zohra in 1957 and sentenced her to death for the Milk Bar murders and other crimes. However, owing to the influence of Europeans, she avoided execution and was released from prison in 1962 when Algeria became independent. Estimates of the number of people killed during the 1954–1962 Algerian War range from 350,000 to well over one million. One must ask whether this death toll could have been lessened. Certainly, if the French had not been so criminal, it would have been. On the other side, what if the Algerians had employed Gandhian tactics, rather than their own reciprocal acts of terrorism? [End Page 429] Gandhi, perhaps the most successful opponent of colonialism in the twentieth century, employed satyagraha to peacefully end almost a hundred years of British rule on the Indian subcontinent. Many regard his peaceful...

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  University Press of Florida eBooks · 2020-04-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The introduction establishes the setting for Pete O’Neal’s life in the United States. It describes the social turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s, including that period’s civil strife, racial discrimination, national and urban unrest, and black power movements. It discusses the formation and ideologies of the Black Panther Party and the strained relations between the police and black citizens, as well as the racially uneven employment picture in Kansas City, Missouri, the city of Pete O’Neal’s formative years.

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• Leaving Algeria and Living in Tanzania

  University Press of Florida eBooks · 2020-04-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  In 1972 Pete and Charlotte O’Neal and their young son left Algeria for Tanzania where some African Americans from the mid-West had immigrated in response to the Tanzanian ambassador’s invitation to contribute to Tanzania’s building. On the way, Pete meets with Libya’s Muammar Khadafi, who gives him a ring and monetary aid. After a brief stay in Dar es Salaam, the O’Neals move to Ngaramtoni and become farmers. Charlotte explains why she wanted to leave Algeria in favor of Tanzania. In 1974 Tanzanian officials arrest many of the African American immigrants after discovering a small number of undeclared firearms in a shipment of household goods sent to them from the U.S. Police also arrest Pete O’Neal for possessing a walkie-talkie. The arrest and incarceration experience, known as the “Big Bust,” caused many of the Americans to leave Tanzania.

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• Submission, Responses, and Final Orders

  University Press of Florida eBooks · 2020-04-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Attorney Austin Shute delivered attorney Magnarella’s petition to the Federal District Court in Kansas. Judge Arthur J. Stanley had retired, and his long-time colleague Judge Earl E. O’Connor had taken over Pete’s case. He accepted the petition, directed the U.S. Attorney to file a response, and allowed O’Neal’s counsel to file a reply. A U.S. Assistant Attorney responded to the petition by arguing, without legal support, that the writ of coram nobis was all but extinct and recommended that the judge invoke the fugitive disentitlement doctrine. The presiding judge refused to examine the merits of the petition. He invoked the fugitive disentitlement doctrine, saying that O’Neal could have litigated his legal issues on appeal in 1970. Because O’Neal had fled the jurisdiction of the court back in 1970, the judge said he was not entitled to any court resources.

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• Life’s Transitions to the Black Panther Party

  University Press of Florida eBooks · 2020-04-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Pete O’Neal describes his failed first marriage and his inability to adapt to a standard working-class life style. Once free from marriage he achieves his 12^th Street ideal by becoming a pimp, only to experience a mental and spiritual breakdown. He commits himself to working for the black community and forms the Black Vigilantes to protect blacks from police abuse. He travels to the Black Panther Party headquarters in Oakland, California, to train and then get permission to form a branch of the Party in Kansas City. He describes the Party’s personnel, structure, and workings in Kansas. Pete marries fellow member Charlotte Hill, and years later both recollect their first meeting and how the Party saved their lives.

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• The Shakur Proposal

  University Press of Florida eBooks · 2020-04-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Defense attorney Paul Magnarella describes American law enforcement’s attempt to bribe Pete O’Neal to arrange for the arrest of fugitive Assata Shakur, who enjoyed refuge from U.S. authorities in Cuba. Magnarella informed O’Neal of the bribe offer, which included money and a possible reduction of O’Neal’s four-year sentence. O’Neal emphatically rejected the offer.

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• Fleeing to Sweden and Algeria

  University Press of Florida eBooks · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Economic history

  While on bail, prior to his appeals, Pete and Charlotte O’Neal escaped to Sweden and then to Algiers where Eldridge Cleaver accepted them into the International Section of the Black Panther Party. An American, Elaine Klein, helped Cleaver and the Black Panther Party become recognized by the Algerian government as an anti-colonial movement. Pete describes the organization and activities of the International Section, focusing on its contacts with the embassies of various communist states and non-state revolutionary groups. He explains the reasons for the split in the Party between Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, the latter’s departure from the Party, and Pete’s assumption of the International Section’s leadership role. O’Neal describes the two plane hijackings to Algiers, the resulting frictions between the Panthers and the Algerian government, and the Panthers’ departure from Algeria. Pete also relates the Panthers’ experiences with some visitors, including Timothy Leary.

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• Growing Up

  University Press of Florida eBooks · 2020-04-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Chapter 1 covers Pete O’Neal’s life from childhood to young adulthood. Pete describes his family life—his sometimes violent father, his nurturing mother, and his grandmother. He describes his first arrest at age eleven and the racist language and physical intimidation of the policeman who interrogated him. He explains how the night life on Kansas City’s 12^th Street both frightened and attracted him because of the admiration paid to its successful hustlers. Pete fails to socially adjust to racially integrated high school. After more scrapes with the law, he joins the Navy to avoid detention, only to be dishonorably discharged after fighting with fellow seamen and violating orders. He ends up in Soledad Prison where he applies himself to the education program it offers and achieves a sense of accomplishment by winning the Toastmaster International writing and speaking competition.

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• Black Panther Party–Community Relations

  University Press of Florida eBooks · 2020-04-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Pete O’Neal describes the Black Panther Party’s various community support programs in Kansas City, Missouri. They include a pre-school breakfast program for inner-city children, as well as clothing, food, medical support, and job and family counseling for people in need. O’Neal explains how these programs were supported by local churches and businesses. O’Neal describes ways the Panthers joined forces with other civil rights organizations such as Soul Inc., the Black Youth of America, and Students for a Democratic Society to protest city policies they deemed to be unfair to inner-city residents and to expose persons who took advantage of these same people. O’Neal also describes the Panthers’ confrontation with a “white” inner-city church (Linwood United Methodist Church) and the resulting reconciliation between the church and the Black Panther Party.

  PublisherDOI

• First Petition

  University Press of Florida eBooks · 2020-04-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Attorney Paul Magnarella, utilizing the writ of coram nobis, filed his first petition with the Federal District Court in Kansas outlining the judicial errors in Pete O’Neal’s 1970 trial and requesting a new trial. Magnarella argued that California Youth Authority law had expunged O’Neal’s early convictions, thereby making O’Neal ineligible for indictment under the Federal Gun Control Act. He also argued that Judge Arthur J. Stanley’s acceptance of the FBI’s warrantless wiretaps of O’Neal’s telephone and the judge’s refusal to hand over the data from the wiretaps to O’Neal were contrary to the U.S. Constitution. To justify O’Neal’s flight and fugitive status, Magnarella explained that O’Neal fled abroad to avoid threats on his life. Magnarella described how the FBI through its COINTEL program conspired with local police to commit illegal acts designed to eliminate the Black Panther Party.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Aygen Erdentuğ

  2 shared

• Orhan Türkdoğan

  2 shared

• Jules DeRaedt

  1 shared

• Jan Vansina

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  1 shared

• Kemal H. Karpat

  1 shared

• I Ketut Wardana Yasa

  1 shared

• Ronald E. Krane

  1 shared

• Madhav Gadgil

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Association of Third World Studies' Book of the Year Award f…
• Nominated for the Raphael Lemkin Book Award for 'Justice in…