Hundreds demand clemency for Peltier

People demand clemency for American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Leonard Peltier, New York City, Dec. 10.

Compiled by Brendan Conley

New York, New York, Dec. 10— Led by Native American residents of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, hundreds of people marched through the streets Sunday to demand clemency for US political prisoner Leonard Peltier. Meanwhile, the FBI, US Justice Department, and a Congressional leader united in their demand that Peltier be kept behind bars, with FBI agents pledging to hold a demonstration of their own.

Peltier, who is serving two life sentences for the killings of two FBI agents on a South Dakota Indian reservation more than 20 years ago, has gained attention in recent days because President Bill Clinton has said he will review Peltier’s case for clemency before he leaves office.

“This could be a very human act for which he will be remembered,” said Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild. “It’s a small window of opportunity.”

Boghosian joined some two hundred others in a march from New York’s Union Square to the United Nations building as the momentum for clemency swept people of all nations to the city streets, some joining a chorus of: “Freedom is in the air. Clemency for Peltier.” Scores more carried signs bearing messages such as, “Begin Native Reconciliation, Free Peltier.”

Though the march was peaceful, New York police officers arrested four of the protesters, charging them with disorderly conduct. “I think they’re trying to send a message to protesters to silence dissent,” said Marina Sitrin of the New York Law Collective.

The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee organized Sunday’s march to coincide with the United Nation’s 52nd anniversary of Human Rights Day. Similar marches were held in San Francisco and Minneapolis Sunday in support of Peltier, who has been imprisoned for nearly 24 years.

Peltier, 56, is arguably the only person convicted of murder during a “reign of terror” described by residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Between 1973 and 1976, more than 60 American Indian Movement (AIM) members and supporters were killed there.

“We want a Congressional committee with subpoena power that can subpoena 1,000 pages of documents that would tell what the FBI was doing on Pine Ridge,” said Bruce Ellison, involved with AIM court proceedings since 1975.

Peltier supporters have said he never received a fair trial. He has since become an international symbol of America’s unjust treatment of Native people.

“It’s easy to say America slaughtered Native people 200 years ago,” said Jennifer Harbury, a Peltier attorney, “but it’s very embarrassing to say our generation slaughtered Native people.”

Clinton’s statement that he may grant Peltier clemency has provoked outrage at the FBI. Louis Freeh forwarded letters on Dec. 5 to Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno, and US Rep. Henry Hyde, reiterating his opposition to the clemency request of a “cold and hardened criminal.” Hyde immediately made the letter public, and said that he supported Freeh’s statement. Reno said that she did not think the letter should have been made public, and that the Justice Department had made its own confidential recommendation to Clinton. Officials admitted that the Justice Department has opposed clemency for Peltier in the past.

International Human Rights Day is
observed in NYC with a march
demanding clemency for Leonard Peltier.

FBI agents, the rank and file, are so alarmed at the prospect of Peltier’s release that they are planning a demonstration of their own in front of the White House, Dec. 15. Needless to say, a public demonstration by FBI agents is exceedingly rare. The rally is technically not sanctioned by headquarters, and the agents who participate will be taking leave to do so, but there’s no question the top ranks will be giving moral support to the demonstrators.

One agent said there probably wouldn’t be signs or banners because that wouldn’t be “dignified.” Another, when asked what the demonstration would look like, responded, “It will be a very dignified and quiet gathering of a couple hundred people in raincoats.” They plan on leaving a letter signed by a large number of agents at the White House gates.

Peltier, a member of North Dakota’s Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe, has gained the support of world leaders, such as the late Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Other supporting organizations include: Amnesty International; European, Italian, and Belgium parliaments; National Council of Churches; UNITY; Journalists of Color; and the National Congress of American Indians.

The turbulent years at Pine Ridge are recounted in Peter Matthiessen’s bestseller, “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.” After its publication in 1983, the book was kept off shelves for nine years. The resulting legal case was finally thrown out of court, but not before it became the longest legal battle in publishing history.

Peltier, who had fled to Canada after the shootings of the FBI agents, was extradited. He went to trial in Fargo, ND, in March 1977, where he was found guilty.

Between 1982 and 1986, Peltier has requested — and been denied — a retrial based on new evidence received through the Freedom of Information Act. The evidence included formerly withheld ballistics reports that arguably would have led to an acquittal.

In 1985, US Prosecutor Lynn Crooks said no evidence existed against Peltier. That admission led to additional new trial requests between 1991 and 1994, which were also denied.

Meanwhile, all Peltier’s requests for parole have been denied. He will not be eligible for parole again until 2008. Peltier has suffered from serious health problems and has not received adequate treatment in prison, according to his supporters.

In 1991, Judge Gerald Heaney of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals recommended clemency for Peltier.

Clinton, who early in his first term said he would review Peltier’s case, visited Pine Ridge village last summer. He was the first president since Calvin Coolidge to set foot on the reservation.

Sources: Associated Press, Lincoln Journal Star, New York Newsday

For more information: Leonard Peltier Defense Committee: www.freepeltier.org

Tear gas greets EU summit leaders

Protesters tear-gassed in Nice, France, Dec. 7.

Compiled by Greg White and Eamon Martin

Nice, France, Dec. 7— Clouds of tear gas greeted European Union leaders arriving in Nice for crucial treaty reform talks on Thursday following clashes between riot police and thousands of activists urging social reforms.

French President Jacques Chirac, who hosted the summit, sneezed in reaction to the tear gas as he entered the mammoth, concrete Acropolis building, and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin stepped away from photographers to discreetly blow his nose.

Over 60,000 trades unionists and anti-globalization activists marched through Nice in rain to protest against perceived inadequacies in a Charter of Fundamental Rights that EU leaders plan to endorse on the first day of their summit.

The demonstrators made their way to within about 300 feet of the center’s main entrance, where the leaders of the 15 European Union nations arrived one by one along with the heads of 13 countries due to join the bloc in the years ahead. But police then pushed the rioters back.

Baton-charged by the police, the demonstrators split into various groups which dispersed through different areas of the town, closely pursued by the police.

According to a local Italian resident who has been living in Nice’s Ru Barla for twenty years, thousands of anti-globalization demonstrators had been confronting the police since early morning, shouting slogans, but with no violence. “The police attacked them, creating confusion. They shot a huge amount of tear gas and anti-riot stun grenades to disperse them. Two boys have been wounded.”

At least 20 police officers were lightly injured in the clashes and two protesters were detained.

Banks and businesses were covered in graffiti with slogans ranging from “Long live ETA,” referring to the violent Basque separatist group, to “Death to Money.”

Activists set fire to a bank and pelted fire services with rocks when they arrived to fight the blaze. Thick black smoke poured from a Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) office, just one block away from the talks.

According to local press accounts, members of the fascist National Front used tear gas against the assembled demonstrators.

In other events, witnesses said thousands of militant activists, many of them Italians, had confronted police at the French Riviera resort’s railway station to protest the barring of fellow activists from Italy that had been stopped from entering France to join the day’s demonstrations. Riot police responded with a tear gas assault.

The Italians weren’t the only ones experiencing free association problems. For two nights, the cops patrolled the streets in order to systematically stop and check identity papers of any group of more than three people.

Anti-globalization demonstrators burn plastic
garbage cans at protests in Nice during
the European summit.

At a public forum the night before, speaker Francois Dufour of the Confederation Paysanne (Farmers’ Coalition) explained why Jose Bove was not present. Bove was intercepted on Wednesday in Paris by security forces and violently slammed to the ground when he tried to enter the site of the prestigious Automobile-Club, Place de la Concorde, where an agricultural conference on the WTO with Mike Moore, head of the WTO, was being held. Bove has risen to notoriety after leading a charge of peasant farmers who sabotaged a McDonald’s restaurant almost two years ago. Since then, the dairy farmer has been one of globalization’s most visible European critics.

The gathering in Nice marks the fifth negotiation to update the EU Treaty in readiness for what will be the fifth round of EU expansion -- this time from 15 to possibly 27 member states in the next few years.

The key issues are more decision taking by majority, and changes in the relative voting “weights” of each country, to give the larger members like Britain, France, Italy and Germany more clout to better reflect their population size. Small countries are concerned that after re-weighting, the larger nations will be able to force their own agenda.

Meanwhile, the row over the newly formed rapid reaction force -- the so-called “Euro army” -- rumbled on as EU leaders began to arrive.

French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin insisted that the force needed “an autonomous military structure.”

Talks on the precise relationship between the new EU defense force and NATO were also on the agenda.

In the morning session, the EU leaders outlined to their counterparts from Cyprus, Malta, Turkey and 10 Eastern European nations a strategy to bring them into the fold by letting each candidate set its own pace of entry negotiations. But no dates were set for entry.

The candidate countries want clear signals from Nice that the bloc is willing to agree with major changes to the way it works so that decision-making will not grind to a halt once the EU embraces up to 30 countries.

The summit plans to address social questions by passing an EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, but the demonstrators say that the document does not do enough to ensure the same legally binding protection for workers in all EU countries.

“I am absolutely against the charter. It is a charter for the powerful and against the workers,” said Katerina Mollura, a 66-year-old Italian from Turin.

Protesters’ demands ranged from more social justice in Europe to increased rights for refugees. They chanted “Europe is not for sale” and “No, No, No to a federal Europe. Yes, Yes, Yes to a social Europe.”

Some of the early bird marchers were angry about the later descent into violence.

“We are peaceful protesters. We don’t want any violence,” said Javier Pla, a 20-year-old student from Valencia in Spain, who was equipped with a gas mask.

Meanwhile, around 50 activists occupied the European Union information center in Prague. The protests held in solidarity with the actions in Nice highlighted the issues surrounding the enforced joining of the Czech republic to the EU and the negative impacts this may have on ordinary Czech people. Once inside, activists gave speeches, redesigned the interior, and replaced the EU flags with Anarchy EU flags.

Police arrived eventually, though no arrests were made.

Sources: Associated Press, ITN, Reuters, CNN, A-Infos News Service

Mumia activist sentenced to jail

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dec. 7— As thousands prepare to rally Saturday to demand a new trial for death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, political activist C. Clark Kissinger, one of the key organizers in the growing international movement to stop the execution of Mumia, was taken away in handcuffs from a federal court in Philadelphia Wednesday afternoon, to begin serving a sentence of 90 days in jail imposed on-the-spot by a vindictive federal judge. Clark was found to have “violated probation” — the sentence imposed on “the Liberty Bell 8” for demonstrating at the National Monument on behalf of Mumia and Leonard Peltier last year. The judge also ruled that once Kissinger finishes serving his sentence, the terms of his one-year probation will be reinstated in full.

He was sentenced by Arnold Rapaport, a federal magistrate judge for the Pennsylvania Eastern District — the same judge who had presided over Kissinger’s original trial.

Ron Kuby and Anthony Erba, Kissinger’s attorneys, immediately filed notices of appeal, as well as a motion to stay the execution of the sentence.

In the hearing today, Clark was charged with violating terms of probation which had been set as a result of a minor charge: “failure to obey a lawful order” to disperse during a demonstration at the Liberty Bell on July 3, 1999. Because Clark and 7 others, including Frances Goldin (Mumia’s publisher) and Brooklyn Green Party activist Mitchel Cohen, had pleaded “not guilty” to the bogus charges and demanded a trial last April, the judge, after finding them guilty, sentenced them to one year probation, confiscated their passports, restricted the defendants to their home districts, imposed a $250 fine and additional “restitution” fees, and required them to file detailed information on their income and personal contacts. They have been subjected to repeated unannounced home visits by US Probation Officers, and some of them were forced to give urine samples — “all this for a crime that is the legal equivalent of jaywalking,” noted Mitchel Cohen, in a statement released Wednesday evening.

The current charge that Clark Kissinger had violated his probation requirements stems from an August 1 speech Clark gave at a rally in Philadelphia during the Republican National Convention — a speaking engagement that Clark had not received permission to attend.

Mitchel Cohen and other co-defendants called the sentencing “an outrage, a total miscarriage of any semblance of justice.” Cohen pointed out that Kissinger and the other Liberty Bell 8 defendants had been denied a jury trial on the grounds that the prosecution was not seeking jail time for them. (Pennsylvania law precludes jury trials on minor charges if no jail time is requested.) “First, they deny us a jury trial based on the claim that they’re not seeking jail time, the judge finds us guilty on bullshit evidence, and then finds a way to imprison Clark anyway!” Cohen said. “It’s an end run around allowing a jury of our peers to decide our guilt or innocence.”

Over 60 supporters rallied in front of the Federal Court House Wednesday, including a number who had been arrested at the Republican National Convention and tortured in Philadelphia’s jails, but whose charges have been dismissed. But police allowed only 20 people into the courtroom. At one point during the hearing, the “unbiased” judge remarked, “A trail of disruption follows this man wherever he goes.” Laughter filled the courtroom, leading a large group of armed federal marshals to forcibly eject Clark Kissinger’s supporters from the courtroom, roughing up several women and taking into custody two Refuse & Resist! Youth Network members. They were later released.

Source: Refuse and Resist!: 212-713-5657