Friday, July 18, 7PM

Saturday, July 19, 7PM

Sunday, July 20, 2PM

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President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-to-4 decision…

The decision was a victory for the Bush administration, which had maintained that a 2001 Congressional authorization to use military force after the Sept. 11 attacks granted the president the power to detain people living in the United States.

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The National Boricua Human Rights Network (NBHRN) and the Comité Pro Derechos Humanos de Puerto Rico (Human Rights Committee of Puerto Rico) are filing a Motion to Intervene in the Motion to Quash the Grand Jury Subpoenas served on Tania Frontera and Christopher Torres. The motion asserts that the subpoenas have a chilling effect on the constitutional rights of association and expression of the both organizations, particularly given the long and sordid historical trajectory of the United States colonial domination of Puerto Rico and its unceasing efforts to criminalize and destroy the movement for the independence of Puerto Rico. Both organizations feel impelled to intervene to prevent this politicized government abuse of the grand jury process. We are ably represented by New York National Lawyers Guild attorneys Alan Levine and Jeffrey Rothman, who are expected to present the motion on Friday, June 27, at the same time the motion to quash is to be heard, at 2:00 p.m. in the courtroom of Judge Carol Amon at the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, 225 Cadman Plaza East, in Brooklyn.

Contact: Michelle Morales, 773/469-6971, Alejandro Luis Molina, 312/296-7210
–
Alejandro Luis Molina
alejandrom@boricuahumanrights.org
Skype: alejandromann

Coordinating Committee
National Boricua Human Rights Network
www.boricuahumanrights.org

Comité Pro-Derechos Humanos
www.presospoliticospuertorriquenos.org

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Parallels: The Puerto Rican Political Prisoners, Control Units & the Campaign to Close Tamms
Featuring the film, Through the Wire, and guest speakers Jan Sulser of the Peoples Law Office, Stephen Eisenman of Tamms Year Ten and Johnnie Walker, former prisoner at Tamms.

Friday, June 27, 7pm at Batey Urbano, 2620 West Division Street.

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NCI # 357422
PO Box 665
Somers, CT 06071

See the Political Prisoners page for more information about Avelino González Claudio.

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The evening includes reflections from ex-political prisoner Alicia Rodri­guez, Grand Jury resister Tania Frontera, coordinator of the Puerto Rican Human Rights Committee Eduardo Villanueva and cultural performances by Orquestra Mapaye and SieteNueve

The event was held on April 4, 2008

This program was produced by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).

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The Puerto Rico chapter of the American Association of Jurists will present to the United Nations (U.N.) in June a complaint against the Government of the United States for what they understand to be the execution of Machetero leader Filiberto Ojeda Ríos by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

The organization, through attorneys Fermín Arraiza and Ricardo Alfonso, will also appear between June 2 and 6 before the U.N. Human Rights Council to denounce this act and obtain support from other non-governmental organizations for the complaint.

“We will go there to denounce the assassination of Filiberto Ojeda and the cover-up by governmental authorities,” said Hiram Lozada, president of the Puerto Rico chapter of the American Association of Jurists.

The U.N. investigator before whom the complaint will be submitted at the end of June will be Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions.

To press for profound investigation

“We will include in the denunciation the federal government’s refusal to give any type of relevant information so that an impartial and profound investigation could be conducted,” Arraiza stated.

The Puerto Rico Department of Justice resorted, with no success, all the way to the United States Supreme Court, seeking to oblige the U.S. government to offer the information under its control about the death of Ojeda Ríos at the hands of an FBI agent in an operation to arrest him in 2005 in Hormigueros.

Arraiza elaborated that the investigator may receive a complaint about the Ojeda Ríos case, even though the investigations under way in the Island have not terminated and even though all local government remedies have not been exhausted.

Once the rapporteur receives the complaint, he will notify the United States government, and the U.S. Department of State must extend to Alston a formal invitation to travel to Puerto Rico to carry out his investigation.

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Associated Press

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The Boricua Popular Army The Macheteros warned today that the FBI is preparing for arrests, kidnappings and even acts to “provoke the death” of independentistas and people’s activists.

In a communiqué mailed to the Associated Press, The Macheteros indicated that the supposed “great onslaught of the FBI” comes in the context of the economic depression, the weakening of the political parties, and the “daily abuses” committed by federal authorities in the Island, which it did not detail.

“Our organization possesses information indicating that the FBI, with the collaboration of the colonial police, are planning an operation to arrest, kidnap, and in some cases provoke the death of independentista, socialist leaders and activists protecting the rights of the people, said the missive.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations evaluated the content of the communiqué, but refused to react. “We have no comment,” maintained Harry Rodríguez, spokesperson for the FBI on the Island.

“The FBI intends to strike at all the groupings and individuals capable of supporting the people in their struggle for decolonization, national liberation and social justice,” added the document dated May 19, but postmarked May 23.

The FBI considers the Macheteros a terrorist organization. Meanwhile, for decades independentistas have condemned persecution by U.S. authorities.

Following the death in 2005 of the self proclaimed leader of The Macheteros, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, the FBI has taken steps to conduct searches and detentions, and a grand jury has subpoenaed several independentistas to appear before a New York court.

These efforts have been related to alleged evidence found in the house of Ojeda Ríos, who died after being shot during a federal operation to arrest him.

“The FBI will continue pressuring, harassing and threatening the Puerto Rican people, and the people of Puerto Rico are not going to collaborate with the agency that vilely assassinated our commander…” added the clandestine group.

“United we can remove the FBI from our country, as we achieved the removal of the U.S. Navy from Vieques. United we can save the Puerto Rican nation from the FBI assassins and their colonial collaborators,” added the document.

It referred to the campaign of civil disobedience unleashed following the death of a civil guard by a mistaken Navy bombing in Vieques. That campaign provoked the departure of the Armed Forces in May of 2003.

The Press Office of Police Headquarters was taking steps to obtain a comment from superintendent Pedro Toledo.

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Committee for the Rescue and Development Of Vieques

This notification (below) circulated today on the internet via the Federal Aviation Administration, to warn pilots about the danger zone on Vieques that will result from the detonation of bombs in the ex Navy practice area to take place tomorrow, Friday.

Over the past two years, the Navy has detonated dozens of tons of bombs left on Eastern Vieques during half century of military use of this island municipality. The denunciations and concerns expressed by the CRDV and other Viequense community groups as well as recent statements from the Puerto Rico Chemists Association, have fallen on deaf ears among the agencies responsible for the environmental and our people’s health.

We use this FAA notification, once again, and this cyber network, to energetically denounce the continued destruction of Vieques environment and the health of our families that results from US Navy practices here; practices that enjoy the complicity of the EPA, Federal Fish and Wildlife Service, PR Dept. of Natural and Environmental Resources, the PR Environmental Quality Board, the Governor of Puerto Rico and the Municipal Government of Vieques.

In the face of dangers posed by the constant detonations in the ex bombing range - an area mined with all types of explosives, including uranium projectiles - the federal and Puerto Rican agencies have allied with the Navy in its desire to eliminate the bombs by bombing us, clean our environment by expelling contaminants into the air and protect our health by increasing the level of military toxics in our geography.

We demand the government authorities change their position of blind support of the Navy’s decisions; it’s time they defend the citizens who pay their salaries and for whom they work - according to their respective ministerial duties.

View FAA notification.

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