120 tribal leaders called on Joe Biden to pardon Leonard Peltier (Wikipedia) before his term ends next week (Native News Online).
Mr. Peltier of the Turtle Mountain Chipewa was imprisoned in 1977. He was convicted of the murder of two FBI agents during a shootout at the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM).
After pursuing a red pickup onto the reservation and getting in a shootout with the occupants, the two agents were killed. The conviction of Peltier relied on a witness who claimed to be his girlfriend, later declared mentally incompetent. It turns out she didn’t know him at all. Peltier’s vehicle was an orange and white suburban. The FBI’s reexamination of the casings from the scene shows no match to Peltier’s weapon. Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and Amnesty International all believe(d) Peltier should be pardoned.
Peltier was denied parole in a hearing held in June of 2024. Christopher Wray, director of the FBI penned a letter opposing his parole (fbi.gov).
Related
- Who is Leonard Peltier? The Hill
- American Indian Movement aimovement.org
- Native American Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier Faces High-Stakes Parole Hearing DemocracyNow
- Leonard Peltier Is America’s Longest-Serving Political Prisoner. Biden May Be His Last Hope. Huffington Post
- Who Is Leonard Peltier (unreleased classified documents pertaining to the case) FOIA Actions
- !Pardon Me!
Wladyslaw Sikorski (20 May 1881 – 4 July 1943) was a Polish military officer and the Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile during World War II.
He was an underground leader supporting Polish independence from Germany and Russia. During World War I he fought in the Polish Legion. During the Second Polish Republic he served as Prime Minister and Minister of Military Affairs.
As Prime Minister of the Polish Government in exile “He supported the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Poland and the Soviet Union, which had been severed after the September 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland. (Subsequently, in April 1943, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin broke off Soviet-Polish diplomatic relations after Sikorski asked the International Red Cross to investigate the Katyn massacres.” Wikipedia
Sikorski was killed in a plane crash off the island of Gibraltar. His death was the subject of many conspiracy theories.
Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) is a Lakota Indigenous American rights activist. As a child he was taken to an Indian School run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He became involved in the American Indian Movement (AIM) as an adult. Currently he is incarcerated in a federal penitentiary following a shootout between the FBI and AIM members on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. He was sentenced to two life sentences in 1976. There are discrepancies in the case against him and volumes of material related to the case remain classified.
“In his 1999 memoir Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, Peltier admitted to participating in the shootout but said he did not kill the FBI agents. Human rights watchdogs, such as Amnesty International, and political figures including Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and the 14th Dalai Lama, have campaigned for clemency for Peltier. On January 18, 2017, it was announced that President Barack Obama denied Peltier’s application for clemency.” Wikipedia
On July 2, 2024 Peltier was denied parole (see previous post Peltier Denied Parole). He has been imprisoned for 48 years for what many believe to be a wrongful conviction.
Related
- Leonard Peltier and the history of the American Indian Movement w/Rachel Thunder | Rattling the Bars YouTube
- Leonard Peltier : Murderer or Martyr ? (1987) – The Fifth Estate YouTube