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CARLOS ALBERTO TORRES IS FREE!
Carlos Alberto was
greeted on Monday July 26th in chicago with thousands of supports.
Today Tuesday July
27th, he will arrive in Puerto Rico and be greeted at the airport and will speak publicly at 7pm.
Frank Velgara of ProLibertad
will be one of several activists to greet him in Puerto Rico!
Supporters
welcome paroled Puerto Rican activist
Humboldt
Park rally welcomes former Chicago resident who served 30 years in federal prison
Just hours after being paroled
from federal prison Monday, Carlos Alberto Torres waded through a joyous homecoming awash with Puerto Rican flags in Humboldt Park.
Once on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list, Torres was released after serving 30
years of a 78-year sentence for seditious conspiracy for his role with a violent Puerto Rican nationalist movement known as
the FALN.
In a rally to celebrate his freedom at a Humboldt Park community center, Torres gently danced to the thumping
of plastic buckets and the chants of about 500 supporters. He wore a black guayabera shirt and a scarf adorned with the word
"patriota."
Many see Torres and the FALN
as terrorists instead of patriots, but the 57-year-old former Chicago resident did not address the group's history at Monday's
rally. Rather, he offered thanks to activists who pushed for his release.
"It's my victory," Torres told the crowd,
"but it's really your victory."
The FALN, a Spanish acronym for Armed Forces of National Liberation, pressed for Puerto Rico's independence with bombs and other violent acts, primarily in
Chicago and New York, from the mid-1970s through the early 1980s. Their actions resulted in six deaths, authorities say.
Torres
was not charged with any bombings, but was convicted for being part of the group. In pushing for parole, his supporters labeled
him a "political prisoner" who had served an adequate sentence.
Over criticism from Mayor Richard Daley, 11 FALN prisoners were released in 1999 after President Bill Clinton offered them clemency.
In an article published in the
op-ed section of the Los Angeles Times last year, Joseph Connor, the son of a man killed by an FALN
blast in New York, called the early releases "a disrespectful affront to all Americans."
Torres, who worked as a community
organizer on Chicago's Northwest Side during his youth, said he understood why some would still harbor ill feelings toward
the FALN activists.
"That is the past, and the past cannot change. We can only impact the moment of the present and
the future," Torres said earlier Monday. "The people have a right to their opinions, and it is not my place to try to convince
them one way or the other."
The Boricua Human Rights Network said supporters are hoping to raise at least $15,000 to
assist Torres on his scheduled return to Puerto Rico on Tuesday morning. Torres has few possessions beyond painting and ceramic
supplies accumulated in prison.
Activists are now pushing for the release of the lone remaining FALN activist in prison,
Oscar Lopez Rivera, brother of Jose Lopez, the well-known executive director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Humboldt
Park.
Fighting back tears, Michelle Morales of the Boricua Human Rights Network told those at Monday's rally: "Today
we celebrate, but tomorrow we have to continue to fight."
oavila@tribune.com
Carlos Alberto Torres - Free, After a
Fashion, at Last
Tuesday 27 July 2010
by: David Gespass, t r u t h o u t |
News Analysis
http://www.truth-out.org/carlos-alberto-torres-free-after-a-fashion-last61745
History is generally written by the victors. Thus, the American Revolution
is recorded as a just struggle for liberation by colonies formerly subject to the whim of the despotic King George III. The
"Tories" who supported the king and opposed independence, even though they made up as large a percentage of the population
as the revolutionaries who called for independence, are reviled in our text books for choosing the wrong side.
Puerto
Rico is today and has been since the Spanish-American War in 1898 a colony of the United States. It took half a century, until
1948, before its people were allowed to elect their governor. In 1952, the US Congress declared it no longer a protectorate,
but a "commonwealth." But while the euphemisms changed, Puerto Rico's colonial status did not. One might think that a country
like the United States, incubated and born in the armed struggle against colonial authority, would show some empathy to those
who chose the path of revolution against an occupier. One would be wrong.
I met Carlos Alberto Torres in 1985 after
a National Lawyers Guild colleague from Chicago stayed at our home in Birmingham when she visited him in federal prison in
Alabama. By then, he had served five years of his 78-year sentence for "seditious conspiracy," the official charge for engaging,
as a member of the Puerto Rican independence group, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), the Armed Forces for National
Liberation, in revolutionary struggle for the liberation of the colony from the United States. Not entirely parenthetically,
Judge Learned Hand referred to the charge of conspiracy as "that darling of the modern federal prosecutor's nursery," since
it requires so little in the way of proof. Indeed, whatever Carlos was convicted and sentenced for, it was not for causing
physical harm to a single person.
After that visit and over the next several years until he was moved to a more remote
federal prison, I was fortunate to see him periodically though, in retrospect, not often enough. Carlos never imposed on me
and always assured me that knowing I was available if he needed help was enough for him. But he was far from friends and family
and I was his one personal contact with the free world. His father was able to visit him once that I recall while he was in
Alabama.
During the years he was in Alabama, his interest was rarely over his own fate. More often, he would want to
talk to me about the needs of fellow inmates or matters of concern to the population as a whole. Still, I had the opportunity
to discuss with him how he should reconcile his desire to get out of prison with his political principles. He had, at his
trial, refused to recognize the jurisdiction of a colonial court to try him, insisting he be treated as a national of a free
and independent country seized as a prisoner of war.
The man I remember was soft-spoken, reflective, serious and caring.
He was certainly committed to the cause of his homeland's independence and the betterment of the Puerto Rican people. One
can debate his tactical choices and whether independence is the best course for Puerto Rico, though it seems odd that being
a colony would ever be a preferable option to the colonized. What no one who has sat down and talked to Carlos can doubt is
his fundamental decency and his sincerity. That is something President Clinton had not done before he offered clemency in
1999 to 12 other Puerto Rican political prisoners, but refused to include Carlos.
Despite his more than 30 years in
custody, Carlos contributed much. He invested in his fellow prisoners, teaching them literacy in both English and Spanish,
earned a college degree and mastered the skills of painting and pottery making, exhibiting his work throughout the US, Puerto
Rico and Mexico. But he could have contributed so much more had he been freed sooner. Finally, he is about to be released
on parole. Celebrations took place July 26 in Chicago and are planned for July 27 in Puerto Rico, to honor him on his release.
It is indeed cause for celebration, but thoughts of what might and should have been in a world and a country that looked at
the real individual and not the image portrayed by prosecutors and the media, lend a sobriety and somberness to the joy of
the occasion.
Not quite a year ago, I became the president of the National Lawyers Guild. As such, I have the good
fortune to boast of the remarkable work done by our members, which is to say to brag about what other people do. So, I take
pride in the report that our International Committee presented to the UN Decolonization Hearings on June 21 of this year,
even though I did not contribute a comma to it. The report exposed the ways in which the United States maintains colonial control over Puerto Rico and discussed the resistance to that control and the
human rights violations that accompany it.
It then went on to discuss the (to coin a phrase) cruel and unusual sentences
imposed on Puerto Rican independentistas. It mentioned two in particular who had spent decades in custody, Carlos and Oscar
López Rivera, as well as Avelino González Claudio. The Guild, along with many other organizations, had previously passed resolutions
calling for their release and, following the presentation, so, too, did the Decolonization Committee. Thus, our happiness
over Carlos' release is further tempered by the continuing incarceration of the other two prisoners. The campaign for their
release continues. We will do our part, but we recognize that it will be - as it always has been - a larger movement than
just the National Lawyers Guild that wins justice for the oppressed.
Puerto Rican Political
Prisoner Carlos Alberto Torres NEEDS OUR SUPPORT!
On January 19, 2010, Carlos Alberto Torres attended a video hearing presided over by a U.S.
Parole Commission hearing examiner whose task was to consider the disciplinary charges stemming from last January, and to
make a recommendation for what should happen with respect to his request to be released on parole. Carlos Alberto answered
the questions posed, and his attorney Jan Susler asked that the Parole Commission release him on parole as previously recommended,
regardless of the wrongful charges. She pointed out the vast, ongoing support for his release, and argued that there is absolutely
no risk in releasing him, as evidenced by the impressive example of his compatriots who were released by presidential commutation
in 1999. The hearing examiner then made a favorable recommendation. The Parole Commission will make the final decision, hopefully
within the next 30 days.
-Jan Susler, Carlos Alberto Torres' lawyer
The ProLibertad
Freedom Campaign is launching a 30 day online petition campaign! We want 1000 people to sign our petition within the next
30 days showing their support for Carlos Alberto Torres.
At the end of
the thirty days the petition will be mailed to the Parole Commissioner.
Sign this petition and forward it out to everyone you know!
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/Parole4CarlosAlberto/
Bureau of Prisons: relentless with Carlos
Alberto Torres
Monday December 21st, 2009:
As
part of the Bureau of Prison’s delayed entry into the 21st century, it is implementing TRULINCS (Trust Fund Limited
Inmate Computer System) throughout the federal prison system, to provide prisoners with access to email through a special
system allowing prison officials to monitor all incoming and outgoing emails.
Puerto Rican political prisoner
Carlos Alberto Torres was looking forward to the convenient, regular communication it facilitates, given that, since his transfer
to FCI Pekin, his postal correspondence is regularly delayed from one to three months.
But it was not to be.
On December 9, the SIS [prison intelligence office] lieutenant called him in to notify him that— unlike the rest of
the FCI Pekin population— he will not be allowed access to email. Why? Because of “his case and his background,”
offered the lieutenant, who had no response to Carlos Alberto’s inquiry as to why, after 29 years of impeccable conduct,
they would treat him this way, pointing out that his release might be just around the corner, citing the USPC hearing examiner’s
recommendation for April 2010 release. Nor did the lieutenant provide the required written explanation for his exclusion from
the program.
Show your support for Carlos Alberto by writing to the U.S. Parole Commission to encourage them
to adopt the recommendation and order his release!
__________________________
BOP increases the heat on Puerto Rican
political prisoner Carlos Alberto Torres
The Federal Bureau of Prisons has upped the ante in its efforts to derail the Parole Commission from adopting the hearing
examiner’s recommendation that Puerto Rican political prisoner Carlos Alberto Torres be released in April of 2010.
This month, BOP officials notified Carlos Alberto that he has been assigned a “Security Threat Group” [STG] status
of “Domestic Terrorist Associate” not insignificant timing, given his 29 years of conduct as a model prisoner.
But the timing is not at all odd, for the BOP’s purposes of derailing his parole.
For the BOP’s efforts, timing has been everything. First, on the eve of his January parole hearing, the BOP leveled
false disciplinary charges. The hearing was postponed; the charges were expunged. At the rescheduled May parole hearing came
the recommendation of release in April of 2010. Within days, the BOP renewed the same false disciplinary charges. The Parole
Commission then issued an order postponing for 90 days its decision whether to adopt the recommendation for release in April
of 2010. Before the 90 day period expired, and while awaiting the adjudication of the false disciplinary charges, the BOP
surfaced the STG status.
In addition to trying
to impact the parole decision, the BOP’s efforts are also calculated to destabilize Carlos Alberto. As a result of the
false disciplinary charges, the BOP held him completely incommunicado for 60 days, cutting off all telephone calls and visits.
Though he was supposed to be able to communicate by way of mail, officials significantly delayed his outgoing and incoming
Spanish language mail, due to a new translation policy, applicable solely to him. Their vigorous application of the new policy
penetrated even his confidential legal mail, as officials confiscated privileged legal materials in the Spanish language.
Thus, added to the uncertainty as to his future is the insecurity as to his ability to communicate, even with his attorney.
Protest letters to the warden and the director of the BOP are available at:
http://boricuahumanrights.org/2009/08/01/puerto-rican-political-prisoner-carlos-alberto-torres-parole-bid-foiled-by-bureau-of-prisons/.
Jan Susler
October 23, 2009
****************************************
Chronology of Federal Bureau of Prisons Intervention
in
Puerto Rican Political Prisoner
Carlos Alberto Torres’ Bid for Parole
Carlos Alberto Torres has served 29 years in prison
for his commitment to the independence of his country, Puerto Rico, serving a 70 year sentence. His release date is currently
set for December of 2024. His conduct in prison has been above reproach. In 1994, he appeared before the U.S. Parole Commission,
seeking release on parole. The commission denied parole and set him for another hearing in 15 years. That hearing was scheduled
for January 22, 2009. The following events demonstrate the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ attempts to intervene in and derail
his efforts to win parole:
November
2008
There is a disturbance in the prison population at FCI Pekin. Prison officials mismanage the incident. Officials
then lock down the entire population for a month.
December 2, 2008
As a result of the disturbance, FCI Pekin officials transfer all the prisoners from the
housing unit where Carlos had been assigned to a two man cell, and place him in Illinois 1 unit, cell A09, a ten man cell
where the other occupants had been living for many months.
December 2008
Carlos makes more than one request for a cell change to a two man cell, but his requests are
rebuffed.
January 14, 2009
Prison
staff serve Carlos with an Incident Report: “On January 14, 2009 at 3:00 p.m., while conducting a shake down of A09
in Illinois 1 unit, I found three shanks concealed in a light fixture in the bathroom area of the cell. This area is considered
common area, and inmate Carlos Torres #88976-024 is assigned to this cell.”
January 16, 2009
At his Unit Disciplinary Committee [UDC] hearing, Counselor Gebur tells Carlos that another
inmate had assumed responsibility for the weapons.
Maurice Wilkins, one of the occupants of the cell, told the
UDC that the weapons were his, and that neither Carlos nor the other cell occupants had any responsibility for them.
Lieutenant
Haynes, who investigated the Incident Report, tells Carlos that he had no information pointing to his guilt, and no information
indicating that Carlos had any knowledge of or involvement with the weapons; and further, that he had information implicating
Maurice Wilkins as the guilty party.
January
22, 2009
The disciplinary hearing officer finds Carlos guilty, stating, “Although inmate Torres indicated he
had no knowledge of the weapons, they were found in a common area of the cell. His contention the owner of the weapons was
to come forward and claim them, does not diminish his responsibility for them, as no one inmate in the cell was given sole
responsibility for possession of the weapons. Therefore, since the weapons were found in a common area of the cell, they are
considered to be in his possession.”
Stating that, “Although not directly related to the infraction,
privileges were taken to deter the inmate from this behavior in the future,” disciplinary hearing officer imposes punishment:
60 days forfeited commissary; 60 days forfeited visiting; 60 days forfeited use of telephone; 30 days disciplinary segregation,
suspended if there is clear conduct for 180 days; and 41 days forfeited statutory good time.
The finding of guilt
is a departure from the norm. Routinely, when one cell occupant accepts responsibility, the other cell occupants are found
not guilty.
January 31, 2009
Maurice
Wilkins, one of the occupants of the cell, makes a sworn statement accepting sole responsibility for the concealed weapons,
stating, inter alia:
* “no one living in cell A09 other than me had any knowledge of the shanks found. The shanks
were mine, and mine alone. I am the one who made the shanks and hid them in the light fixture undeknown [sic] to any other
person who lived in the cell.”
* “the shanks were mine and mine alone, and no one other than me had knowledge
of them.”
February 2009
The
National Boricua Human Rights Network, the Comité Pro Derechos Humanos de Puerto Rico, and other groups and individuals commence
an ongoing letter writing campaign to support Carlos’ bid for parole and denounce the Bureau of Prisons’ efforts,
sending hundreds of letters to the warden and the director of the BOP.
April 30, 2009
BOP regional director, in response to Carlos’ administrative appeal of the guilty finding,
admits a “procedural error,” and returns the incident report to the prison “for reconsideration.”
May, 2009
FCI Pekin staff inform Carlos the Incident Report
has been expunged.
May 26, 2009
Parole
hearing at FCI Pekin via videoconference with hearing examiner for U.S. Parole Commission; hearing examiner recommends release
on April 3, 2010.
June 10, 2009
FCI
Pekin Warden Smith approved the unit team’s request to process the re-written Incident Report.
June 2009
At the second UDC hearing, Carlos restates his innocence
and provides the committee with Maurice Wilkins’ sworn statement accepting sole responsibility and absolving Carlos.
July 2009
At the second DHO
hearing, Carlos restates his innocence and provides the committee with Maurice Wilkins’ sworn statement accepting sole
responsibility and absolving Carlos. Additionally, Maurice Wilkins testifies in person and tells the DHO that he was solely
responsible and that Carlos had nothing to do with, and did not know about, the weapons. Regardless, the DHO finds Carlos
guilty once again.
During the hearing, Carlos asks the DHO what information he needs to affirm Wilkins’
statement and prove his innocence. The DHO tells him “a UDC investigation.”
Carlos’ efforts
to obtain such an investigation have been for naught, with officials telling him there is no such thing.
July 27, 2009
U.S. Parole Commission issues Notice of Action,
stating: “Defer decision for up to 90 days to determine the outcome of the pending disciplinary report for Possession
of a Weapon. Upon disposition by the DHO, a copy of the misconduct report and DHO findings should be submitted to the Commission
for review.”
September 2, 2009
The
bilingual prison intelligence officer--- who has been translating Carlos’ Spanish language mail for more than
a year, and who continues to translate other prisoners’ Spanish language mail informs Carlos that he will be subject
to a new procedure for screening his Spanish language mail that henceforth his mail must be sent to a translator outside
the prison, which will delay for a month the delivery of his incoming and outgoing mail. The officer also tells Carlos that
the order comes from higher up, and that “they” are watching Carlos’ every move. The officer provides Carlos
with nothing in writing.
The initial response to Carlos’ grievance indicates only that “the change
in mail handling procedures is to ensure the safety and security of the institution.”
October 9, 2009
The warden’s response to Carlos’
further grievance about his mail informs Carlos, for the first time, that “you are on enhanced mail monitoring status
due to your STG assignment of Domestic Terrorist Associate. This STG assignment requires translations to be completed by a
certified linguist. Currently, there are no staff members at FCI Pekin that are a certified linguist for Spanish.”1
No one provided Carlos with any documentation
of such status, or with the criteria for placement on or removal from such status.
October 10, 2009
Prison staff violate Carlos’ confidential attorney-client mail, confiscating legal
materials written in the Spanish language, telling him they must copy and translate the privileged materials.
October 25, 2009
The Parole Commission’s 90 day deferral
expires.
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