Petition for Clemency for Peltier

Current signers include
Russell Means, Noam Chomsky, Peter Matthiessen, James Messerschidt, Andrea Carmen (IITC), Matt Rothschild (Progressive magazine), Jeffrey St. Clair/Alexander Cockburn (Counterpunch) and Eric Seitz

President Obama: Free Leonard Peltier

We, the undersigned, call on President Obama to extend immediate and unconditional clemency to Leonard Peltier, an American Indian Movement activist wrongfully imprisoned for more than 33 years. We call further for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission based on the South African model to investigate the respective roles of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the American Indian Movement in the violence that ravaged the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the 1970s, as well as examine the historical context in which the conflict occurred.1 Dozens of Native activists and Lakota traditionalists were murdered on the reservation between 1973 and 1976, most of them at the hands of death squads created by a corrupt tribal dictatorship with the complicity of the BIA and the FBI.2 The United States Senate's recent apology to Native Americans rings particularly hollow in light of Peltier's Aug. 20 federal parole denial, which the respected indigenous activist and artist views as tantamount to a death sentence. In light of the fact that Leonard Peltier has been the subject of government misconduct from the time of his extradition from Canada in1976 to the present-day suppression of FBI documents, has already served more time than the presumptive maximum federal sentence, and has an impeccable prison disciplinary record, his continued imprisonment is unjustifiable on any grounds3. By freeing Peltier and ordering the release of all documents related to the case, President Obama would send a strong message to Indian Country and the world that his administration is serious about fulfilling his campaign commitments to human rights and transparency.
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Organizational Affiliations/Occupation (for identification purposes)
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Please sign and return to: 701-235-5045 (fax) or mail to: LPDOC
PO Box 7488
Fargo, ND 58106