Leonard Peltier To Joe Biden: 'I'm Not Guilty. I Would Like To Go Home.'
Leonard Peltier knows his time is running out.
The Native American rights activist is 77, has serious health issues, just survived an ugly bout with COVID-19 and is now serving his 46th year in federal prison ― where the U.S. government put him without any evidence that he committed a crime.
Peltier and his supporters are holding out hope that President Joe Biden will finally send him home. Because, if anything has become clear with time, it’s just how troubling Peltier’s imprisonment has been from the start. Prosecutors in his trial hid key evidence. The FBI threatened and coerced witnesses into lying. A juror admitted she was biased against Native Americans on day two of the trial, but was allowed to stay on anyway.
Even some of the same U.S. government officials who helped put Peltier in prison in the first place have since admitted how flawed his trial was and how horribly the government has long treated Native Americans, and they have urged clemency for him.
There is reason to believe that Biden could, at last, give Peltier his freedom. He has already demonstrated a willingness to address past injustices against Native Americans. Since taking office, Biden has made it a priority to examine the government’s ugly history of Indian boarding schools, to protect sacred Indigenous sites and cultural resources, and to address the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women. He also canceled the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a major win for tribes and environmentalists.
Biden also chose Deb Haaland to lead his Interior Department, making her the nation’s first Indigenous Cabinet secretary. Haaland strongly advocated for Peltier’s release from prison in her former role as a member of Congress.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/leonard-peltier-joe-biden-clemency_n_6266f6d9e4b0dc52f49aaf1f
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Leonard Peltier is a political prisoner. Let him go home.
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