WASHINGTON — Amnesty International is appealing to President Joe Biden to use his final weeks in office to “rectify a case of injustice” by releasing 80-year-old Native American rights activist Leonard Peltier from prison.
“As a matter of humanity, mercy, and human rights, you should grant clemency and release Leonard Peltier,” reads a Wednesday letter to Biden from Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA.
“This would not only allow Peltier to be home with his family and community for his last years, but it would also help mend the fractured relationship between Native Americans and the U.S. government, which could be forever part of your legacy,” said O’Brien.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Here’s a copy of O’Brien’s letter, which also calls on Biden to take actions like closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center and changing course in response to the Israel-Gaza war.
Peltier, who is nearly blind and struggles to walk, has been in prison for almost 50 years. He is widely considered to be America’s longest-serving political prisoner.
The U.S. government convicted him for murdering two FBI agents in a 1975 shoot-out on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. But his trial was carried out with unbelievable misconduct: The FBI threatened and coerced witnesses into lying. Federal prosecutors hid evidence that exonerated Peltier. A juror admitted on Day 2 of the trial that she was biased against Native American people, but she was kept on anyway.
The government’s case fell apart after these revelations, so it abruptly revised its charges against Peltier to aiding and abetting whoever did kill those agents — entirely on the grounds that he was one of dozens of people present when the shoot-out took place.
The FBI and U.S. attorney’s office later admitted they never did figure out who killed those agents. There was never evidence that Peltier committed a crime.
In his letter to the president, O’Brien raised concerns about Peltier’s health — he has diabetes and an aortic aneurysm — amid the ongoing unfairness of his imprisonment. Peltier was hospitalized in July after his diabetes reportedly caused him to “develop open wounds and tissue death on his toes and feet.” He was hospitalized again in October.
“No one should be imprisoned after a trial riddled with uncertainty about its fairness,” O’Brien wrote, “and keeping him locked behind bars does not serve justice.”
Members of Congress, U.S. senators, Indigenous rights groups, Hollywood celebrities and international human rights leaders including Pope Francis and Nelson Mandela have called for Peltier’s release over the decades. The main reason he’s still in prison, if not the only reason, is because of staunch opposition from the FBI. But the bureau’s stated reasons for opposing Peltier’s release are full of holes, outdated and remarkably easy to disprove.
“The FBI remains resolute against the commutation of Leonard Peltier’s sentence for murdering FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams at South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975,” the bureau asserted to HuffPost in a 2022 statement. “We must never forget or put aside that Peltier intentionally and mercilessly murdered these two young men and has never expressed remorse for his ruthless actions.”
The FBI still has not publicly addressed the key context of that 1975 shoot-out, either: The FBI itself was intentionally fueling tensions on that reservation as part of a covert campaign to suppress the activities of the American Indian Movement, or AIM, a grassroots movement for Indigenous rights. Peltier was an active AIM member and an FBI target.
Biden has authority to unilaterally release Peltier before he leaves office. Presidents historically announce batches of clemencies at the ends of years, and particularly at the ends of their terms.
Biden wouldn’t even have to formally pardon the Native American elder; he could simply grant Peltier clemency, which would allow him to live out his final years at home with his family in South Dakota without the U.S. government simultaneously conceding it was wrong to imprison him.
HuffPost spoke to Peltier in a rare interview in May 2022. Asked what he would say to Biden if he had a few minutes alone with him, he said his message would be simple.
“I’m not guilty of this shooting. I’m not guilty,” Peltier said. “I would like to go home to spend what years I have left with my great-grandkids and my people.”