The world calls for Peltier's release

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Leonard Peltier is a political prisoner who was wrongly extradited from Canada to the United States in 1976 and has spent the last 23 years imprisoned for a crime the United States government today openly admits it cannot prove he actually committed.

On June 26, 1975, two FBI agents were killed in a shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. But the troubles had begun long before that day.

Tensions on the reservation had been running high. For the past three years, a war had been waged between two distinct groups on the reserve - the traditionalists, and the mixed bloods, led by tribal chairman Dick Wilson and his private army, the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (or GOONs as they were more commonly known).

The traditionalists fought Wilson in his attempt to sell off portions of the Lakota land to outside industrial interests. Wilson fought back by burning traditionalists' houses to the ground. Their vehicles were rammed, people brutalized and killed. Gunfire was a familiar sound on the reservation.

The traditionalists asked the American Indian Movement, of whom Peltier was a head member, for help in dealing with Wilson's reign of terror. Tensions increased dramatically when AIM supporters took over the hamlet of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1973 and declared their independence from the United States. The U.S. army was brought in, along with armored personnel carriers, grenade launchers, fighter jets, helicopters and ground personnel. It was the largest fighting force assembled by the United States to fight Native Americans in this century.

During the 71-day occupation, two Native Americans were killed. The occupation fizzled to an end, but AIM continued to live and work with the traditionalists to fight Wilson.

By 1976, the traditionalists were living in fear. On June 26, 1976 two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, entered the reservation. While there are many differing versions of what happened next, what is known is that a shoot-out occurred leaving the two FBI agents dead.

FBI reinforcements and Wilson's GOONs quickly arrived on the scene and the firefight was on. Pine Ridge resident Joe Killsright was killed.

AIM members involved in the firefight realized the only way out was to flee into the mountains. All 15 escaped, helped by friends and relatives in Pine Ridge.

Peltier was among them. He escaped to Canada and was hidden at Smallboy's Camp near Robb, Alta.

Four people - Jimmy Eagle, Darrell "Dino" Butler, Steve Robideau and Leonard Peltier - were later charged for the killing of the FBI agents. Eagle's charges were dropped. Butler and Robideau, who went to trial while Peltier was fighting extradition from Canada, were acquitted on the grounds of self-defense by an all-white jury.

Peltier stayed in Alberta for several months until being arrested in 1976. But to get Peltier back to the United States, Canada had to be convinced to give him up. The FBI bullied a young Indian woman with mental problems, Myrtle Poor Bear, who has since recanted her testimony, until she provided a statement to the FBI that she saw her "boyfriend," Leonard Peltier, kill the FBI agents. She gave three such affidavits, each giving more details about the shoot-out. Poor Bear later said she had never met Peltier, and had seen him for the first time at his trial in Fargo, North Dakota.

But the false affidavits were enough for the Canadian government to be duped into extraditing Peltier. A controversial trial followed and Peltier was convicted, not of aiding and abetting as one might think, but of the actual murder of the agents.

Since his imprisonment, a worldwide effort has been made to secure an investigation by the United States and Canadian governments into Peltier's illegal extradition, his trial and subsequent imprisonment.

The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee has chapters across the U.S. and a head office in Toronto where Anne and Frank Dreaver have worked for 16 years on te case.

So far, the Canadian government has shown little desire to take on the U.S. government, although individual government officials have inquired into the issue at various times during the past two decades.

Amnesty International has made strong recommendations to the United States to establish a commission of inquiry into the FBI's activities. Amnesty International releases bulletins around the world that recommends Peltier receive a new trial.

In 1984, the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered an evidentiary hearing concerning newly discovered evidence previously withheld. Included in that evidence is admissions of FBI perjury, planted ballistics evidence, and prosecutor Lynn Crook's statement that it remains unproven who actually shot the FBI agents. The request for a new trial, however, was denied.

In 1987, a Private Members' Motion (M-28) was debated in Canada's House of Commons. The motion, introduced by MP Jim Fulton, called for Peltier's return to Canada and the annulment of the original extradition proceedings. The motion was not brought to a vote.

That same year, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review Peltier's second appeal for a new trial, exhausting all legal avenues in the United States.

Two weeks later, a benefit concert in support of Peltier was staged by singers Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Joni Mitchell and comic Robin Williams. Nelson's subsequent appearances were picketed by the FBI and other enforcement agencies. Nelson staged another benefit with proceeds given to the Native community and a benevolent fund for retired FBI agents.

In 1989, the Canadian Supreme Court dismissed a motion for leave to appeal the Peltier extradition, but acknowledged that a fraud between two countries did occur. It pointed to the federal political process as a means for a remedy to the situation.

In early 1991, a second Private Members' Motion (M-115) was filed by Member of Parliament and former Justice Minister Warren Allmand who demandd that the Canadian government seek Peltier's return to Canada.

A few months later, Gerald Heaney, a senior judge with the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals in the U.S., wrote to Senator Daniel Inouye that the release of Peltier would further the healing process between the states and the Native American people. A copy of the letter was forwarded to the president.

Later that summer, the New Democratic Party of Canada adopted a resolution at their national convention to recognize Peltier as a political prisoner for his defence of the rights of Aboriginal people.

In April 1992, Viking Publishers and author Peter Matthiessen were able to re-publish a book titled In The Spirit Of Crazy Horse. The book outlines the history and incidents at Pine Ridge during the Wounded Knee occupation in 1973. First published in 1983, it was pulled from shelves and banned for 10 years following a multi-million libel suit initiated by the FBI and South Dakota Governor William Janklow.

In the book, FBI bungling and duplicity was uncovered and Janklow is quoted as saying "the only way to end the Indian problem is to put a gun to the AIM leaders' heads and pull the trigger." The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the lawsuit and the book was reprinted and released.

In June and July of 1992, the Canadian Labour Congress, representing 2.2 million unionized workers, passed a resolution pledging its support of Peltier. A documentary called Incident at Oglala, produced by Robert Redford, was released to theatres across Canada and the U.S.

That winter, oral arguments by American attorneys, a Canadian law professor and Peltier attorney Diane Martin were heard in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeal in St. Paul, Minnesota. Martin represented 55 Canadian members of Parliament whose principal concerns involved Peltier's extradition which they claimed involved Canada's sovereignty and a breach of trust in procedure of the Canada-U.S. extradition treaty. This third appeal was denied.

The next year, a etition for executive clemency was filed asking for Peltier's sentence to be commuted and for a congressional investigation into FBI misconduct. This followed the release of new evidence through the Freedom of Information Act in both Canada and the U.S. Just before Christmas of 1993, the U.S. Parole Commission denied Peltier parole and ruled he must serve an additional 15 years before parole can be reconsidered.

In April 1994, the Royal Commission of Aboriginal Peoples sent a communiqué to Canada's then-Justice Minister Allan Rock recommending a full ministerial review of Peltier's extradition. A month later, the Justice department authorized a formal review of the Peltier case, after almost 20 years of continuous lobbying and appeals in Canada.

Eight months later, the European parliament, in an overwhelming majority, passed a resolution in support of Peltier's clemency request. The parliaments of Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France and Belgium sent letters of support for clemency.

The following year, Liberal MP Warren Allmand, at the request of Canada's Justice Minister Allan Rock, prepared to review the government's files on Peltier in order to assess Canadian violations. The U.S. Justice Department attempted to block Allmand's right to access the files, citing the action would breach confidentiality agreements in the Canada-US extradition treaty. At the same time, a formal intervention for Peltier was filed by Frank Dreaver of the Leonard Peltier Defence Committee Canada to the Working Group of Indigenous Populations of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. An estimated 600 pages of primary evidence and other documentation compiled by law professor Dianne Martin was formally accepted and became a permanent record at the UN.

In February 1996, Peltier's 20th year of imprisonment was commemorated worldwide with prayer vigils, petitions at the Canadian and American embassies, public forums, letter-writing campaigns, and picketing of FB