By Graham Lee Brewer and Curt Anderson | Associated Press
Sumterville, Florida – Amerindian activist Leonard Peltier was released from a Florida prison on Tuesday, weeks after the president of the time, Joe Biden, angry the laws of the laws by prevailing to do his sentence to life at home in killing them in 1975 of two FBI agents.
Peltier, 80, left Coleman the penitentiary in a SUV, according to a prison official. He did not stop to speak with journalists or the two dozen supporters who gathered outside the doors to celebrate his release.
Peltier, a member of the Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa Indians in Northern Dakota, had returned to his reserve, where family and friends celebrate his release with him on Wednesday and where the tribe organized a house to he Long live while serving his confinement at home.
Throughout his prison almost half a century, Peltier argued that he had not murdered FBI agents Jack Colaer and Ronald Williams during a confrontation that day on the Indian Pine Reserve Ridge in southern Dakota. The Amerindians largely believe that he was a political prisoner who was wrongly sentenced because he fought for tribal rights as a member of the American Indian movement.
“He represents each person who has been blurred by a cop, profiled, harassed his children in school,” said Nick Estes, professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota and member of the Lower Brule tribe Sioux who pleaded for exit from Peltier.
Biden did not forgive Peltier. But his January 20 switching from Peltier’s sentence to home imprisonment, noting that Peltier had spent most of his life behind bars and was in poor health, aroused the criticism of those who believe that Peltier is guilty . Among them, the former director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, who called Peltier “a killer without remors” in a private letter to Biden obtained by the Associated Press.
One of his lawyers, Jenipher Jones, said Peltier was looking forward to going home.
“We are so excited for this moment,” said Jones before his release. “He’s in a good mood. He has the soul of a warrior.
His supporters outside the prison, including some who gave flags saying “Leonard Peltier Libre”, were delighted.
“We never thought he would come out,” said Ray St. Clair, a member of the White Terk of the Chippewa tribe of Minnesota who went to Florida to be there for the release of Peltier. “It shows that you should never lose hope. We can take this repair of the damage that has been caused. It’s a start. “”
Peltier was active in AIM, which formed in the 1960s and fought for the rights of Native American treaties and tribal self -determination.
Peltier’s condemnation came from a 1975 confrontation on the Indian reserve of Pine Ridge in southern Dakota in which the two FBI agents were killed. According to the FBI, Coler and Williams were there to serve arrest mandates for qualified flight and assault with a dangerous weapon.
The prosecutors supported the trial that Peltier drew on the two agents in the head at close range. Peltier admitted to be present and shoot a weapon at a distance, but he said that he had shot self -defense and that his blows were not those who had killed the agents. A woman who claimed to have seen Peltier shooting the agents then retracted his testimony, saying that he had been forced.
He was found guilty of two first degree murder leaders and was sentenced to two consecutive perpetuity penalties.
Two other AIM members, Robert Robideau and Dino Butler, were acquitted for self -defense.
Many supporters of Peltier and even some prosecutors have questioned the equity of his trial and the evidence presented against him. But Michael J. Clark, president of the Société des former special agents of the FBI, stressed that many federal judges have denied peltier calls.
“We firmly oppose the switching of his sentence,” said Clark, describing the decision to “bad reflection” on Biden. “It was sort of arose over everyone at the last minute. Literally at the last minute of his presidency. It’s just difficult.
Peltier was denied parole as recently as in July and was not eligible to be considered again until 2026.
As a child, Peltier was taken from his family and sent to a boarding school. Thousands of indigenous children over the decades have been faced with the same fate and have been subject to systemic physical, psychological, psychological and sexual abuses.
“He hasn’t really had a house since he was taken to the boarding school,” said Nick Tilsen, who pleaded for the release of Peltier for years and is CEO of NDN Collective, a plea group led by Aboriginal people based in southern Dakota. “He is therefore delighted to be at home and paint and have grandchildren.”
Brewer reported to Norman, Oklahoma.
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