Leonard Peltier, an indigenous activist and innocent man, has been wrongly incarcerated by the US government since 1977. Amnesty International and many other organizations say he is a political prisoner. The president has the power to release him.

Please act today to help Peltier live his remaining days in freedom.

Free Peltier Now has a video about his life and his case, a petition for you to sign, suggestions for calling the Obama White House to ask for clemency, and other information. Peltier is in ill health and frail. Time is running out.

Recently, James Reynolds, one of the US attorneys who prosecuted the case, wrote to Obama and asked him to release Peltier. The Guardian has some good coverage.

The letter is an extraordinary development for the Native American activist who has been incarcerated for more than 40 years. Civil rights activists and indigenous leaders have long argued that he faced a deeply flawed and unfair trial.

Reynolds said it was wrong for Peltier to remain behind bars after 40 years, particularly considering that prosecutors ultimately considered him an accomplice in the crime [of killing two FBI agents during the Wounded Knee resurgence in 1975]. “You’re not really participating in the crime yourself. Just because you’re there, you’re going to get nailed.”

The Daily News has some additional quotes from Reynolds:

[Reynolds] also admitted he’s not convinced of Peltier’s guilt — even though the activist was convicted of fatally shooting FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams and has spent the last four decades behind bars.

“I don’t know. Who knows?” Reynolds said, when asked if the wrong man might have gone to prison.

“The hardest thing is to try and go back and reconstruct history. He may not have (done the crime),” Reynolds said, adding that Peltier “would not be the first” to suffer a wrongful conviction.

Peltier in Solidarity with Standing Rock

Although he is not in good health, Leonard Peltier continues to be aware and concerned about indigenous struggles. On January 5, he published a letter of support for the water protectors.

I am grateful to have survived to see the rebirth of the united and undefeated Sioux Nation at Standing Rock in the resistance to the poisonous pipeline that threatens the life source of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. It is an honor to have been alive to see this happen with you young people. You are nothing but awesome in my eyes.

It has been a long, hard road these 40 years of being caged by an inhuman system for a crime I did not commit. I could not have survived physically or mentally without your support, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my soul for encouraging me to endure and maintain a spiritual and legal resistance.

Along the lines of what Martin Luther King said shortly before his death, I may not get there with you, but I only hope and pray that my life, and if necessary, my death, will lead my Native peoples closer to the Promise Land.

I refer here not to the Promise Land of the Christian bible, but to the modest promises of the Treaties our ancestors secured from enemies bent on their destruction; in order to enable us to survive as distinct peoples and live in a dignified manner. Our elders knew the value of written words and laws to the white man, even as they knew the lengths the invaders would go to try to get around them.

The 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee ended with an agreement to investigate human rights and treaty abuses; that inquiry and promise were never implemented nor honored by the United States. The Wounded Knee Agreement should be honored with a Truth and Reconciliation Commission established to thoroughly examine the US government’s role in the “Reign of Terror” on Pine Ridge in the 1970s.

I call on all my supporters and allies to join the struggle at Standing Rock in the spirit of peaceful spiritual resistance and to work together to protect Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth. I also call upon my supporters and all people who share this Earth to join together to insist that the US complies with and honors the provisions of international law as expressed in the UNDRIP, International Human Rights Treaties and the long-neglected Treaties and trust agreements with the Sioux Nation.

Other websites with lots of information:
http://www.freeleonard.org/case/
http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/