LEONARD PELTIER DENIED BASIC RIGHTS-UN, HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS INTERVENTION SOUGHT
Paula Ostrovsky - LPDC Media PR | 10.07.2005 07:37 | Social Struggles | World
Indigenous political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, continues in arbitrary solitary confinement at USP Terre Haute. His basic rights are being denied and his health threatened. Intervention by Human Rights organizations is urged.
After learning that at the sixth day of his solitary confinement, Leonard Peltier is being denied phone privileges, religious rights, visitation privileges, cannot write out, cannot even breathe fresh air, and is running out of medication, his Defense Committee has launched a national and international campaign asking human rights bodies and advocates to intervene on his behalf. Leonard Peltier is an internationally known Native American political prisoner who has been incarcerated in the United States for almost thirty years for defending his people on sovereign Indian land. His conviction came about as a result of well known, and proven, outrageous government misconduct in which documents were withheld, witnesses intimidated, and false testimony was allowed as evidence, among many other irregularities.
The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (LPDC) with the invaluable help of the International Indian Treaty Council (an organization working for protection of the sovereignty and human rights of indigenous peoples in the Americas and the Pacific) has appealed to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, its Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Human Rights, The Special Representatives of the Secretary General on Human Rights Defenders, members of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues, the National Native American Prisoners Rights Coalition, the Office of Multi-Lateral Affairs, Democracy, Human Rights and Labor of the United States State Department, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, among others. They are asking for urgent assistance in response to the new crisis situation, which has further violated Peltier’s rights and is currently threatening his health.
Last Thursday, June 30th, in a move that Russell Redner, Executive Director of the LPDC, describes as “extraordinary domestic rendition”, Mr. Peltier was transferred without notice to his attorneys or his family from the United States Federal Prison at Leavenworth Kansas to the United States Federal Prison at Terre Haute Indiana. He is arbitrarily being held there in solitary confinement indefinitely with the resulting suspension of all his prisoner privileges and basic human rights. He was a well-respected model prisoner at Leavenworth, he is an elder, has many serious health problems, and poses no threat to the system. “There is no real basis for subjecting him to this kind of treatment” affirms Barry Bachrach, his lead counsel.
The International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) had already submitted a communication to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions in 2004 regarding Peltier’s wrongly obtained conviction and imprisonment. In yesterday’s communication, IITC urges the U.N. Group to exercise its mandate and visit Mr. Peltier in prison.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
RUSS REDNER, LPDC DIRECTOR, 866-534-6151 (TOLL FREE)
BARRY BACHRACH, LPDC ATTORNEY, 508-926-3403
ALBERTO SALDAMANDO, IITC GENERAL COUNSEL, 415-641-4482
The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (LPDC) with the invaluable help of the International Indian Treaty Council (an organization working for protection of the sovereignty and human rights of indigenous peoples in the Americas and the Pacific) has appealed to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, its Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Human Rights, The Special Representatives of the Secretary General on Human Rights Defenders, members of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues, the National Native American Prisoners Rights Coalition, the Office of Multi-Lateral Affairs, Democracy, Human Rights and Labor of the United States State Department, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, among others. They are asking for urgent assistance in response to the new crisis situation, which has further violated Peltier’s rights and is currently threatening his health.
Last Thursday, June 30th, in a move that Russell Redner, Executive Director of the LPDC, describes as “extraordinary domestic rendition”, Mr. Peltier was transferred without notice to his attorneys or his family from the United States Federal Prison at Leavenworth Kansas to the United States Federal Prison at Terre Haute Indiana. He is arbitrarily being held there in solitary confinement indefinitely with the resulting suspension of all his prisoner privileges and basic human rights. He was a well-respected model prisoner at Leavenworth, he is an elder, has many serious health problems, and poses no threat to the system. “There is no real basis for subjecting him to this kind of treatment” affirms Barry Bachrach, his lead counsel.
The International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) had already submitted a communication to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions in 2004 regarding Peltier’s wrongly obtained conviction and imprisonment. In yesterday’s communication, IITC urges the U.N. Group to exercise its mandate and visit Mr. Peltier in prison.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
RUSS REDNER, LPDC DIRECTOR, 866-534-6151 (TOLL FREE)
BARRY BACHRACH, LPDC ATTORNEY, 508-926-3403
ALBERTO SALDAMANDO, IITC GENERAL COUNSEL, 415-641-4482
Paula Ostrovsky - LPDC Media PR
e-mail:
info@leonardpeltier.org
Homepage:
http://leonardpeltier.org
Comments
Hide the following 2 comments
misinformation?
10.07.2005 10:36
sarah
this is very relevant
11.07.2005 17:42
exerpt from here:
cointelpro the untold American story
Snitch Jacketing
Under the guidance of the FBI, informants were often able to work their way into positions of power, such as was the case with Chicago-BPP Chief of Security William O'Neal, or American Indian Movement bodyguard Douglas Durham. Such individuals were often considered valuable due to the (FBI-supplied) information they were able to provide. Besides misleading and provoking the infiltrated groups, another technique used by informants was to "snitch jacket" genuine activists, to make them appear to be the informants. One such person was Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael.
Utilizing the services of an infiltrator who had worked his way into a position as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader's bodyguard, the Bureau deliberately created the false appearance that Stokely Carmichael was himself an operative. 83 In a memo dated July 10, 1968, the SAC, New York, proposed to Hoover that:
... consideration be given to convey the impression that CARMICHAEL is a CIA informer. One method of accomplishing [this] would be to have a carbon copy of an informant report supposedly written by CARMICHAEL to the CIA carefully deposited in the automobile of a close Black Nationalist friend ... It is hoped that when the informant report is read it will help promote distrust between CARMICHAEL and the Black Community ... It is also suggested that we inform a certain percentage of reliable criminal and racial informants that "we have it from reliable sources that CARMICHAEL is a CIA agent. It is hoped that the informants would spread the rumor in various large Negro communities across the land. 84
Pursuant to a May 19,1969 Airtel from the SAC, San Francisco, to Hoover, the Bureau then proceeded to "assist" the BPP in "expelling" Carmichael through the forgery of letters on party letterhead. The gambit worked, as is evidenced in the September 5, 1970 assertion by BPP head Huey P. Newton: "We ... charge that Stokely Carmichael is operating as an agent of the CIA." 85
Snitch jacketing has even resulted in the target's death. This appears to have occurred in 1975 in the case of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, a young Micmac woman working with the American Indian Movement on the Pine Ridge Reservation. According to attorney Bruce Ellison,
"I represented a young mother and AIM member named Anna Mae Pictou on weapons charges. She told me after her arrest that the FBI threatened to see her dead within a year unless she cooperated against members of AIM. In an operation [similar to those] previously used against members of the Black Panther Party, the FBI, through an informant named Doug Durham who had infiltrated AIM leadership, began a rumor that she was an informant.
"Six months later her body was found on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The FBI said she died of exposure. They cut off her hands, claiming that this was necessary to identify her, and buried her under the name of Jane Doe.
"We were able to get her body exhumed, and a second, independent autopsy revealed that rather than dying of exposure, that someone had placed a pistol to the back of her head and pulled the trigger. When I asked for her hands after the second autopsy, because she was originally not buried with her hands, an FBI agent went to his car and came back and handed me a box, and with a big smile on his face he said, 'You want her hands? Here.'" 86
The FBI agents involved then used the morgue photos of Aquash to frighten another victim, Myrtle Poor Bear, a woman with a history of deep psychological disorder, for which she had undergone extensive treatment, explaining to their captive that she'd end up "the same way" unless she did exactly what they wanted. Poor Bear quoted Agent Wood as informing her, in specific reference to Aquash, that "they [Price and Wood] could get away with killing because they were agents." Poor Bear was coerced into giving false testimony which led to the extradition of Leonard Peltier, who remains a political prisoner to this day. [See "Political Prisoners" section].
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please read this report
and wake up
paul c