•  HOME 
  •  ARCHIVES 
  •  BOOKS 
  •  PDF ARCHIVE 
  •  WWP 
  •  SUBSCRIBE 
  •  DONATE 
  •  MUNDOOBRERO.ORG
  • Loading


Follow workers.org on
Twitter Facebook iGoogle




Peltier transferred, supporters urged to take action

Published Jul 14, 2005 9:06 PM

Leonard Peltier

Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier, a Lakota-Anishnabe, has been moved from Leavenworth Federal Peni tentiary to the maximum security prison at Terre Haute, Ind., and is being kept in the hole indefinitely.

The Leonard Peltier Defense Com mittee (LPDC) is calling on all supporters to call and write the prison to allow Peltier to contact his family, “ask how he is, ask where to write, ask if he’s okay, ask about his health, his privileges (phones, letters, visits, religious rights, ability to paint)” and to let them “know that the entire world is watching.” The contacts for the prison are: USP Terre Haute, 4700 Bureau Rd. South, Terre Haute, IN 47802; phone (812) 244-4400 and fax (812) 244-4789.

As Leavenworth is being converted from maximum to medium security, prisoners are being transferred to Terre Haute and also a “supermax” prison at Florence, Colo. Prisoners at Terre Haute are forced to work and its prison industry includes ammunition production for the U.S. military. Peltier’s attorney, Barry Bachrach, told Democracy Now! reporter Amy Goodman that Peltier will stay at Terre Haute “unless we can change his security level.” Peltier is an elder and has health issues.

Leonard Peltier has been in prison for almost 30 years for a crime he did not commit. Two FBI agents died in 1976 at Pine Ridge Reservation during a shootout which the FBI had started in a tiny reservation village as children, adults and elders slept in their homes. There was never any evidence that Peltier fired the shots. The U.S. suppressed hundreds of thousands of documents in his favor to extradite him from Canada.

U.S. prosecutors have publicly admitted that they do not know who actually fired the shots that killed the agents. The FBI has never released these documents, despite many Freedom of Information Act actions brought by Peltier’s lawyers.

One of the FBI officers who directed COINTELPRO—the illegal counterintelligence program that targeted and assassinated many members of the American Indian Movement, the Black Panther Party and other groups in the 1960s and 1970s—was Mark Felt, recently praised in the media as the news source for the Nixon Watergate crimes.

The U.S. government, in violation of its own statutes, has repeatedly refused to parole Peltier since he became eligible over 11 years ago and will not consider him for parole until he has served over twice the normal term for his alleged offense.

On June 15, a hearing in Peltier’s case held in Fargo, N.D., addressed the illegality of his sentencing based on the sovereignty of the Lakota Nation. The U.S. District Court used a statute citing the “territorial jurisdiction of the United States,” but the incident for which he was charged took place on reservation lands, which have been ruled “domestic, dependent sovereigns” by the Supreme Court. Bachrach states, “The hearing is important because Mr. Peltier was never charged with crimes over which the U.S. had jurisdiction.”

Leonard Peltier is recognized around the world as a political prisoner. Everyone from Nelson Mandela to past and present members of the U.S. Congress and many human rights organizations have called for his freedom.

The defense committee must now move to Terre Haute from Kansas, an expensive undertaking. It asks that donations be sent to the Peltier Legal Fund in care of his attorney, Barry Bachrach Esq., Bowditch & Dewey LLC, 311 Main St., Worcester, MA 01615.