The recent contagion with covid-19 of the longest-serving political prisoner in the United States, indigenous leader Leonard Peltier, brought to light once again the details of his unjust imprisonment and all the lies and falsehoods that were concocted to sentence him to two life sentences.

By Guillermo Alvarado

The recent contagion with COVID-19 of the longest-held political prisoner in the United States, indigenous leader Leonard Peltier, brought to light once again the details of his unjust imprisonment and all the lies and falsehoods that were concocted to sentence him to two life sentences.

It is not gratuitous to say that he is a political prisoner, because during his trial the Federal Bureau of Investigation, better known by its acronym in English FBI, hid fundamental evidence, blackmailed witnesses to force them to lie and manipulated documents of the prosecutors.

Several specialists agree that, in that trial, the verdict should have been of complete innocence, but he has been imprisoned for almost 45 years and there is no will to release him, which indicates that the real causes of his punishment are political, not legal.

In the "country of liberties" everything points to the fact that the former leader of the American Indian Movement, who fought for the return of his ancestral lands, will die in prison for a crime he never committed.

As is known, in 1975 a shooting occurred on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where two FBI agents were killed. On that day Peltier was there, but did not participate in the events.

He was nevertheless arrested and charged for the deaths. The ballistics report, which would have proven his innocence, was never shown, and the only eyewitnesses, three children, were threatened to testify against him, although years later they recanted and said that the FBI forced them to lie.

Moreover, one of the jurors said in public that he hated the town to which Leonard Peltier belongs, and was allowed to remain on trial.

The fact is that James Reynolds, the same federal prosecutor who led the prosecution and sent him to jail, years later studied the process in detail and discovered all the errors and horrors committed, which led him to become an activist for his release.

It is said that former presidents William Clinton, Barack Obama and even Donald Trump, were preparing to pardon him, but that never happened in the end.

The real obstacle is the FBI, which is adamantly opposed to recognizing Peltier's innocence and the unfairness of his imprisonment.

If you wonder how, or why, such an entity can oppose and force a U.S. president to act in this or that direction, remember that in the Federal Bureau of Investigation files there is data so sensitive, as to paralyze anyone who wishes to enjoy his retirement.

This is justice and freedom in the style of the empire, my friends, the one that is so ready to punish others if they get in its way a little bit like this.