 With occasional interruptions due to prison disciplinary actions , Abu @-@ Jamal has for many years been a regular commentator on an online broadcast , sponsored by Prison Radio , as well as a regular columnist for <unk> <unk> , a Marxist newspaper in Germany . In 1995 , he was punished with solitary confinement for engaging in <unk> contrary to prison regulations . Subsequent to the airing of the 1996 HBO documentary Mumia Abu @-@ Jamal : A Case For <unk> Doubt ? , which included footage from visitation interviews conducted with him , the Pennsylvania Department of <unk> acted to ban outsiders from using any recording equipment in state prisons . In litigation before the US Court of Appeals in 1998 he successfully established his right to write for financial gain in prison . The same litigation also established that the Pennsylvania Department of <unk> had illegally opened his mail in an attempt to establish whether he was writing for financial gain . When , for a brief time in August 1999 , he began delivering his radio commentaries live on the Pacifica Network 's Democracy Now ! <unk> radio <unk> , prison staff severed the connecting wires of his telephone from their mounting in mid @-@ performance . He was later allowed to resume his broadcasts , and hundreds of his broadcasts have been aired on Pacifica Radio . 
