Leonard Peltier Deserves Freedom

Alejandro Murguía

Tecolote

El

How would you feel if you were incarcerated for a crime you didn’t commit?

And how would you feel knowing that the government officials who prosecuted you — have admitted over the course of these years of imprisonment that they were wrong, and coerced witnesses and the truth is no one knows who actually committed the crime for which you’ve languished in a federal penitentiary for 47 years, even while Covid-19 ran unchecked thru that Florida prison, and you were 75 years old and in poor health?

When someone is imprisoned by a government, not for any egregious crime, not for some criminal act but for their political stance, or for vengeance, or whatever, such a person is known as a political prisoner. A case in point is the Russian activist, Alexei Navalny, who is in a Russian jail for his political activism.

But the longest-held political prisoner is not in Russia. Nor in Myanmar, or any other repressive regime in the world you care to name. No.

The longest-held Indigenous prisoner in the world is right here in the United States. The prisoner is a Native American, Leonard Peltier, an activist, and a member of the American Indian Movement, serving a life sentence, currently in a Federal Prison in Florida. Florida, where the same Federal government 150 years ago fought a genocidal war against the Seminole people.

Forty-eight years ago, on June 26, 1975, a long-simmering conflict, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in North Dakota, resulted in an exchange of fire that left three people dead, one a Native American, and two FBI agents. There was no eyewitness to the death of the two FBI agents.

The government acquitted two Native Americans on self-defense in the killing of the agents, but a third — Leonard Peltier — was convicted. But considering the times and cir- cumstances, his conviction was met with skepticism. Even a cursory look at how the U.S. government has handled affairs in the part of the world where Leonard Peltier is from shows what circumstances and history he was facing. The site of the worst massacre of Native people in history, the slaughter at Wounded Knee in 1890, ongoing oppression and a governmental policy that borders on genocide.

What is the history of the FBI at the time of the incident at Pine Ridge? The Bureau was led by J. Edgar Hoover, who corrupted the Bureau with his racism, homophobia, and investigations into perceived enemies of the country. To the extent that the FBI initiated a policy of harassment of figures like Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and in the case of Fred Hampton, collaborated in his assassination.

Before the events of June 26, 1975, some 60 traditional tribal members and American Indian Movement (A.I.M.) members had been murdered at Pine Ridge. But the FBI was not interested in investigating these murders, and in fact, there is suspicion that they allowed them to go on.

Thus, the story the FBI put down regarding the events of that tragic day was suspicious from the get-go. The skepticism was correct since it has been known for years that the U.S. Attorney General prosecuting the case withheld 140,000 pages of testimony, and also withheld exculpatory evidence. Three teenage witnesses claimed they saw the shooting. Later these same witnesses recanted their testimony because the FBI had coerced them, and even with false testimony, they did not place Leonard Peltier at the murder site. Another witness, named Myrtle Poor Bear, who claimed to have seen Peltier at the site of the killing, turned out never to have even met Peltier and wasn’t even at Pine Ridge that day.

It was evident then that the FBI was not interested in finding whoever killed the two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams. What they wanted was revenge against A.I.M. members. To keep them in their place. Note that the FBI only investigated the death of the Federal agents, but who gave the order not to investigate the killing of Joseph Stunts, who was shot in the head by a sniper? Was it an FBI agent that fired that fatal shot? Could it be that the Bureau feared what they would discover if they tested the bullet that killed Joseph Stunts?

Does anyone believe that the FBI would acknowledge its mistakes in this case, or that they would open an investigation as to who shot Stunts? Judge Heaney, who authored the decision denying a new trial, has since voiced firm support for Mr. Peltier’s release, stating that the FBI used improper tactics to convict Mr. Peltier, the FBI was equally responsible for the shoot-out.

Alexei Navalny, the Russian political prisoner, is serving a twen-

See LEONARD PELTIER, page 8

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