Leonard Peltier, the American native activist who has always maintained his innocence in the murder of two FBI agents 50 years ago, was released Tuesday morning from a federal prison in Florida after former President Joe Biden commuted his two chains perpetual.
The act of clemency allows Peltier, who is 80 years old and has been in health decline for years, fulfilling his remaining days in housing confinement.
Peltier is being transferred to his birthplace in Dakota del Norte, where he is a citizen of the Chippewa turtle band, and will be welcome with celebrations to “connect with his hometown and adapt to life among his people”, The NDN Collective, a defense organization led by indigenous, said in a statement.
“We pledged to free Leonard Peltier and bring him back to his countries of origin; this is we fulfill that commitment,” said Nick Tilsen, founder of the organization.
The Federal Prison Office refused to comment before Peltier’s release, citing security and privacy reasons. Inmates in the confinement of the home remain in BOP custody and are generally subject to conditions that limit their trips and activities; It requires drugs and alcohol tests; and can involve electronic monitoring equipment to enforce the touches of curm.
The scope of the rules on Peltier was still resolved, but their age and health must be taken into account, said Jenipher Jones, the main lawyer in the case of Peltier.
She added that he would receive medical attention to her release while fighting with ailments, such as diabetes, hypertension and partial blindness of a stroke.
“He has undergone medical negligence for almost 50 years,” Jones said. His liberation “gives him the opportunity of a life, a human existence, and the ability to commit more acutely with his culture, with his religious practices and his sacred practices.”
Throughout the decades, Peltier’s case has attracted a leading support from international human rights groups and civil rights icons, including Coretta Scott King; religious leaders, such as Pope Francis and Dalai Lama; and legislators and celebrities of the congress.
But Biden’s decision, which arrived on his last day in office, was also convicted of groups of application of the law that said Peltier was not worried about the death of FBI agents Jack Coler and Ron Williams.
“Lord president, he urge him in the stronger terms: do not forgive Leonard Peltier or interrupt his sentence,” wrote the then director of FBI Christopher Wray A biden in early January while President weighs if granting clemency.
Wray also opposed Peltier’s request during an audience last year to be released on probation. The offer was denied.
Coler and Williams were killed in June 1975 while they were in the Pine Ridge Indian reserve in Dakota del Sur, where they tried FBI research.
Peltier was a member of the American Indian movement, a base activist organization that began in Minneapolis in the 1960s to challenge police brutality and the oppression of indigenous rights. I was in Pine Ridge following a prolonged protest two years before in the injured knee, South Dakota, where AIM armed activists and the tribal members of Oglala Sioux had occupied the city and collided with federal law agents. Two activists were killed.
The day Coler and Williams arrived in Pine Ridge, radirammed that they had been criticized in a shooting that lasted 10 minutes, said the FBI. Both men were fatally shot at a short distance.
Peltier was identified as the only person in the reserve in possession of an AR-15 rifle that could shoot the type of bullet that killed the agents, according to the researchers.
But dozens of people had participated in the shooting; In the trial, two coacked were acquitted after they claimed self -defense. When Peltier was tried separately in 1977, no witnesses who could identify him as the shooter was presented, and unknown to his defense lawyers at that time, the federal government had retained a ballistic report that indicates that the fatal bullets did not come from their weapon , According to the judicial documents, Peltier presented in the appeal.
The FBI said that a subsequent evidence of shell housing evidence coincided with the extractor brands of a housing recovered from the groove of the Coler car with the AR-15 associated with Peltier.
Jimmy Carter was president when Peltier was sentenced in the trial in 1977 for the murders of the agents. Two years later, Peltier was involved in an escape from the prison in which he received an additional five -year sentence.
James Reynolds, the US prosecutor whose office had handled the prosecution and appeal of Peltier’s case, then became a defender of his release, writing to several presidents, including Biden, to grant clemency.
He said he altered his views after taking into account the questionable evidence in such a chaotic environment when the crime occurred, the acquittal of Peltier’s coacuses in his own judgment and the historical abuse of American natives by the government federal.
“The case is just a tremendous spontaneous abortion of justice, in my opinion,” said Reynolds, who was appointed by Carter, in a telephone interview. “I realized that it was not correct what they did to Leonard. It was enough.”
Peltier told NBC News in 2022 that he wanted to clean his name in a new trial.
Jones, the main lawyer, said he believes that “any arrest of Leonard is illegal” and that he would advance with appeals in his case.
Peltier’s eldest son, Chaunley Peltier, was between Tuesday that he was waiting for the official word that he was out of prison.
Chancey Peltier, who lives in Oregon, said he plans to meet with his father next month in North Dakota after seeing him for the last time during a visit to the prison in 2015.
He said he was grateful for those who worked behind the scene to boost his father’s liberation and, ultimately, drill to intervene.
“An injustice was corrected,” said Chaunley Peltier. “He doesn’t know how much this has meant for the family.”
