Obama, Mandela and Leonard Peltier

[babsbunny]

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2013/1977

Columns
Harvey Wasserman

July 3, 2013

Barack Obama has taken his two daughters on a dramatic visit to the Robben Island cell once occupied by Nelson Mandela.

Let's hope he takes them next to the one now occupied by Leonard Peltier.

Mandela was famously held by the apartheid South African government for 27 years. He became a global symbol, then president of his nation.

Mandela was charged, among other things, with attempting to overthrow a government, which he admitted.

For 37 years, Peltier has consistently denied the charges against him, which arose from a native American resistance action at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

His bitterly contested 1977 conviction in the killing of two FBI agents came in Fargo. Peltier has since been held under extremely harsh circumstances in a variety of US prisons. He has been denied a wide range of basic rights, been severely beaten, and can't get much-needed medical care. Now in his late sixties, Leonard's health has dangerously deteriorated.

[think]

1. K&R for Leonard Peltier

[SamKnause]

2. Leonard

K&R

Pardon Leonard Peltier !!!!!

[Mnemosyne]

3. K&R nt