Tlahui-Politic. No. 7, I/1999


Lobbying for the political prisoners
By Leonor Mulero
Of El Nuevo Día
Tuesday, March 16, 1999.

Información enviada al Director de Tlahui. Puerto Rico a 27 de Marzo, 1999.

Washington: Now that the tumult provoked by the trial of Bill Clinton has passed, the three Puerto Rican congressional representatives asked the president's counsel, Charles Ruff, for a meeting to discuss the petition for the pardon of the 15 Puerto Rican political prisoners. Ruff, who in the last months concentrated on Clinton's defense in the impeachment cases emerging from the sex scandal with the ex-White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, is the chief of the legal division of the White House and makes the pardon recommendations to the President.

Luis Gutiérrez, Nydia Velázquez, and José Serrano sought the meeting in a letter of March 11 addressed to Ruff. In the letter, a copy of which El Nuevo Día obtained, the legislators emphasized that the liberation of the prisoners is a matter of great urgency and justice.

In a break from the activities of the Puerto Rican legislators' weekend meeting in Albany, New York, Velázquez commented to El Nuevo Día that "we are facing the problem that we haven't received information from the Department of Justice" of the United States. It is Justice's role to make a recommendation to the White House.

A source indicated that those who favor the liberation of the prisoners are lobbying vice- president Al Gore to intercede in favor of the pardon. Following the defeat of statehood in the 1998 plebiscite, the pardon of the prisoners is the request some sectors of Puerto Rican democrats are making of Gore in exchange for supporting him in his presidential campaign. Certain New York leaders hope that the prisoners will be free by the time of the New York primaries on March 7, 2000.

In the activities in Albany, Serrano said, "we have to keep asking for their freedom." The main argument of the pardon petition is that the 15 independentists have been in prison more than 18 years.

In the letter, the congressional representatives noted that this length of time in prison is excessive for the offenses for which these independentists were convicted. In general, those convicted of murder are released after serving less than 18 years in prison, argue the prisoners' advocates.

"The petition for presidential pardon enjoys the support of eleven active or former Members of Congress, former President Carter, several Nobel Laureates, the heads of several U.S. churches, leaders of all three political parties in Puerto Rico, among many others," notes the letter.

The congressional representatives indicated that more than 100,000 people from the United States and Puerto Rico have asked the President to pardon the political prisoners.

From: National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Prisoners prpowpp@aol.com
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