The ongoing drama that has surrounded a planned benefit concert by Rage Against The Machine, Beastie Boys and Bad Religion for convicted murderer Mumia Abu Jamal came to a head on New York's airwaves Thursday afternoon.

Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello (an outspoken supporter of Mumia) and Maureen Faulkner (the widow of the police officer Mumia is convicted of killing) both called into New York's K-ROCK on Thursday and clashed over the benefit and the cause behind it.

Faulkner, the widow of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, called the New York radio station first to urge fans to boycott the show, set for January 28 at the Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

I'm outraged," Faulkner told New York's WXRK, 92.3 K-ROCK of the show, staged by Rage and other Mumia supporters who believe the African-American political activist was not treated fairly during his trial, in which he was found guilty of the 1981 shooting death

of the police officer.

I heard about this about a week and a half ago off the Internet. I have a website (at www.justice4danielfaulkner.com) and someone e-mailed me this, and I read it at 10 o'clock at night and I was awake the entire night," Faulkner continued. "I was just so upset that this band... they've been duped. In a way, I feel sorry for them because they have been mislead by the defense attorney once again, and I would be willing to talk to them. I would be willing to give them the facts, the evidence, the court transcriptions that prove that Mumia received a fair trial and he is guilty of first degree murder, of murdering my husband in cold blood.

Morello then called the station later that same afternoon and, after a neighborhood blackout forced him off the air for some time, claimed that the benefit was all about due process.

Jamal did not receive a fair trial," Morello told

the station. During his conversation with the station Morello claimed that there was gross prosecutorial misconduct and intimidation of witnesses in the case.

In the United States of America you do not execute a man who did not have a fair trial," Morello claimed. "There's a word for that, and that word is lynching.

After charging prosecutors in Pennsylvania with coercing witnesses into false testimony, Morello decried the whole matter as "a medieval situation.

The Philadelphia Police Department has a long and glorious history of framing suspects," the guitarist charged. "He is simply innocent of the crime.

Ironically, K-ROCK was originally aligned with the show, but pulled its promotional support after morning jock Howard Stern expressed his outrage over the station's involvement in the benefit.

Faulkner's widow told K-ROCK on Thursday that she has also attempted to contact the show's promoter, Ron Delsner, but said that he has refused to

talk to her. She added that she has had to move away from Philadelphia because of harassment from Mumia supporters.

I, in my own eyes, believe that Mumia sells," she told the radio station about the support he has found for his cause. "His voice sells. His hair sells. Many of the anti-death penalty people have made him their poster boy.

New Jersey governor Christie Todd Whitman and the head of the New Jersey State Police have also denounced the benefit.

The January 28 show is sold out. An announcement was made on K-ROCK that refunds are being made available to ticketholders via Ticketmaster for those who do not wish to support the cause.