Indians activist Leonard Peltier He left a prison in Florida after almost five decades behind bars, after swelling the former president of the United States Joe Biden.
On Tuesday morning, Peltier came out of the Federal Center in Coleman, Florida, and was taken by SUV. He did not speak as he left prison.
Peltier, 80, has become a global symbol for Indigenous rights After their 1977 murder conviction, with groups like Amnesty International and supporters like actor Robert Redford, they invite his freedom.
Mount Mountain Indian Chippewa Mountain, Peltier has long maintained his innocence, and advocates claim that his trial was left to.
“I am finally free today! They may have closed me, but they never took my spirit! “Said Peltier Ua statementpublished by NDN Collective, an activist group. “I look forward to seeing my friends, family and my community. Today is a good day.”
He will return home to booking the Turtle Mountain in Belcourt in North Dakota, where a return to the house is planned on Wednesday.
“We are so excited about this moment,” said Jenipher Jones, one of Peltier’s lawyers, for Associated Press. “It’s in a good mood. He has a warrior’s soul.”
Peltier was convicted in the murder of two agents from the Federal Investigation Office (FBI) from 1975 at the Indian reservation of Pine Ridge in southern Dakota.
FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, were in a booking to serve an arrest warrant.
But after arriving at the jumping ranch, they entered the shooting with members of the American Indian movement (AIM), including Peltier. As many as 30 people were present at the shooting.
Several AIM members were arrested afterwards charged with killing agents. Second, Robert Robideau and Darrelle Butler were judged, but eventually liberated on the basis of self -defense.
Peltier fled to Canada, but in the end he was extradited to trial in the US.
While Peltier admitted that he fired a gun in self -defense, he repeatedly denied the cracking and murder of the agents. Prosecutors claimed that agents were shot in the head ranging from an empty part; Peltier said he was not nearby at the time of their death.
The supporters also claimed that the trial against Peltier of 1977 was deeply flawed, citing suppressed evidence.
In addition, the woman who testified that she saw Peltier shooting at agents later stated that she was forced to do so and abolished her testimony.
During the period when the shooting occurred, the FBI has made efforts to harass and exploration of the Indian’s activist organizations, along with other groups for civil rights across the country.
For Peltier’s supporters, his closed almost half a century is a symbol of a double standard in the judicial system.
Members of his family also called for a compassionate release on health basics: Peltier is partly blind and suffers from health problems such as diabetes and heart problems.
“I know that they will not succeed in the next conditional freedom with the conditions in which he lives. He will not do it for long,” Pamela Bravo, one of Peltier’s relatives, said Al Jazeera last year.
But the prospects for the release of Peltier have long been divided, and the FBI and the Law enforcement groups have resolutely opposed their freedom.
On the eve of the hearing in the probation last year, the then director of FBI, Christopher Wray, called his potential edition “Affront at the rule of the law.”
“Peltier never accepted responsibility or showed remorse,” Wray wrote. “It is completely inappropriate for conditional freedom.”
Wray repeated those feelings in his personal letter to President Biden, calling a Peltier “an impersonal killer.”
However, other members of the Biden administration, including the secretary of the interior of Deb Haalanda, a member of the Pueblo Laguna tribe, advocated Peltier’s freedom.
International pressure occurred: figures such as Dalai Lama and Pope Francis joined the calls for his release.
Ultimately, in the last hours of his Presidency on January 20, Biden passed Peltier’s sentence.
The commutation, however, is not a pardon, and the Peltier will continue to live under home custody.
“We never thought it would come out,” said Ray St Clair, a member of White Earth from the Minnesota Chippewa tribe, shortly before Peltier’s release. “It shows that you should never give up hope. We can fix the damage that has been applied. This is the beginning.”
