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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