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. He was 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 and spent 49 years in prison. 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.
On 20 January 2025 President Joe Biden commuted Peltier’s sentence.
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