February 17, 2010

http://www.elnuevodia.com/momentocrucialparapresopoliticoboricua-673046.html

Translated by Jan Susler

WASHINGTON – Some time after this week, a U.S. commission can decide whether to grant parole to Puerto Rican political prisoner Carlos Alberto Torres, who in April will have served 30 years in prison.

“There is no deadline for the decision,” informed his attorney Jan Susler. But it’s a fact that soon, Torres, 57 years old, will learn the ruling on his second bid for parole in 15 years. The first was denied.

A year ago, when he was just a week from the new hearing before the U.S. Parole Commission, prison authorities at Pekin (Illinois) accused him of having three “shanks” in his cell.

One of the prisoners who shares the cell with Torres— who is serving a 70 year prison sentence after being found guilty of seditious conspiracy for his connections with the clandestine group Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN)— admitted the “shanks” were his.

The charges were dismissed, but they were reinstated, and as part of the parole application process, he’s had to once again defend against them, in spite of the fact that the person who hid the weapons provided a sworn statement saying his cellmates were not responsible.

In spite of pressure from the Bureau of Prisons, the hearing examiner on the case has recommended that Torres be granted parole in July. The decision is in the hands of the Commissioners who make up the Parole Commission. “We are moderately optimistic,” stated the chair of the Human Rights Committee in Puerto Rico, Eduardo Villanueva, former president of the Bar Association.

“No Puerto Rican political prisoner has served more time in prison than he has,” said Susler, who stated that the Bureau of Prisons is trying to “sabotage the process.” In addition to the “shanks” accusation, they have classified Torres, for the first time, as a “security threat,” and are monitoring letters he receives in Spanish, including those from his attorneys, among other measures.

Another Puerto Rican political prisoner, Oscar López, also connected to the FALN, will have served 29 years in prison this year, the same number of years served by the Nationalist, Oscar Collazo, for the 1950 shooting at Blair House, president Harry Truman’s residence.

International support

Villanueva maintains that the U.S. Parole Commission has surely never had to deal with a parole application that has received more support from a people, including political leaders of the three ideologies and religious organizations on the Island. “More than ten towns have approved resolutions for the release of Carlos Alberto and Oscar,” he added.

Petitions supporting Torres’ parole have also been sent from throughout the world, including Mexico.

López hasn’t wanted to apply for parole, aware of the past experience of other prisoners, and he hasn’t wanted any such privilege while Torres is still in prison.

The other Puerto Rican political prisoner in U.S. prison, Avelino González Claudio, recently plead guilty to two charges related to the $7 million robbery of Wells Fargo, in Hartford (Connecticut), which took place September 12, 1983, for which The Macheteros took responsibility.

“In my interview with Claridad a few weeks after leaving (prison in 1999), I said I preferred shoes suitable to living out in the country over high heels. That was like a sneak peek at what was to come, because I can’t even count how many pairs I’ve used working up here (in Guavate).”

For Alicia Rodríguez, one of the ex Puerto Rican political prisoners released in 1999, the past 10 years have been “a constant challenge.” Instead of returning to Chicago, she preferred to move to Puerto Rico, where she’d never lived before. She’s had so many experiences since then- for purposes of this interview we are separating them into two parts: this time with Alicia, and the next time with her sister, who is also an ex political prisoner, Ida Luz, better known as Lucy.

When they arrived in Puerto Rico, both sisters went to live in an apartment in San Juan. However, given the high cost of housing, in December of 2000, they moved to a small apartment in Guavate. Alicia had a car which, even she admits, “we didn’t know how it worked, and we didn’t check the oil, and I burned up the engine.” They were able to fix the car with money from a previous accident.

In 2001, Alicia converted her bedroom into a pottery studio and moved her futon to the living room. The artisan certificate from Fomento gave her to opportunity to get a kiln, a wheel and clay.

Alicia worked with Remi the Clown (José Vega) the first two years. She met him when he visited her in prison. “He was very patient with me,” admits Alicia. And the most difficult thing of that first job after 19 years in prison, she recalls, was “the language. Speaking and understanding Spanish. Remi understood this and always helped me with the spirit of a brother. Feeling that support in that moment of my life was really important. And something I like about him is the respect he has for his public and for the children. I stopped working with him because we decided on this project, which was to build our house and studio.”

And in 2004, a small vacant structure on a hill in Guavate, near where they were living, became what would soon be the home of Alicia, Lucy, and their mother Josefina, who, since they left prison, spends several months a year with her daughters, especially the frigid winter months in Chicago where she maintains her home.

“In 2004 we started to work on the house, and in 2005, we moved in,” says Alicia.

Enthusiastic with her studio, she moved to another stage, that of working on the building that would become their house, and that of constructing a second floor for their studio. A $15,000 loan, added to the sales price of the house, made it possible to provide the first floor with floor tiles, windows, doors, a kitchen, electricity, and a septic tank, “and my mother bought the refrigerator and the stove she wanted, because that’s her kitchen,” relates Alicia.

The photos she keeps of the original structure that resembled a warehouse, and its surroundings greatly contrast with what it is today. Plants and fruit trees now surround the house, where before there was grayish growth and tuff rock. On the second floor is the studio. To make this transformation happen, Alicia carried cement blocks, sand, stones and cement, pulling a wheelbarrow tied to her waist, up an improvised ramp from the road to the house, where the material couldn’t be brought. She keeps talking while she shows photos of “the brigades” of friends and compañeros who helped her with the construction. “We started to work here. It was May, and it rained for 23 days. So we worked on the land, weeding, cleaning, working with the earth. And that introduction to the earth led me to know the space and make me feel part of it.” Alicia arranged and installed the PVC tubes to bring water to the house, and “when they broke, I would put on a poncho and boots and go out in the rain to fix them.” She also dug ditches to deviate the water away from the structure. One of the earth walls had occasioned a collapse.

Alicia is conscious that “someone with money can build something pretty solid, but with few resources, you have to deal with what there is.” So, she explains, it’s taken several years to finish the house and the studio. But since then, even though there are some problems, she has been producing ceramic pieces, including beautiful sets of dishes. Power outages gravely affect kiln firings. Alicia changed the automatic mechanism to manual “thinking that it was better, and when it kept over firing my pieces, I called Texas (where the manufacturer is) and they told me that I’d simplified it so much that it would never reach the desired temperature.” So she had to repair the kiln on her own. “I remember that (the manufacturer) told me to get a multimeter and check the amps and the voltage, and I said, ‘how do I do that?’ And, like Lucy says, I’ve graduated.”

There is a lot of love in this house, humble but full of color. There is peace. The months her mother spends with her, they try to catch up for lost time. Several dogs and cats also have a space at home. Alicia takes responsibility for almost everything. “Because you can’t call maintenance. You have to look and say ‘who’s going to fix this?’ Well, I am. And if you don’t know how, you call Ramoncito at the hardware store and ask him how you can fix it.”

Alicia admits that “I sleep alone here, with my dogs, when Lucy and Mom aren’t here. I feel well protected in Puerto Rico, but not outside of Puerto Rico.” She has no doubt that her ancestors are present in this Puerto Rican nation and “the ancestors are not forgotten.” She recognizes that because of them, she never felt alone “in those four walls in prison, because I always feel that we are a race worthy of struggle.”

How do you see those years in prison now, from this life so far from that life?
“As an education. It was a time of much challenge, of growth. I don’t see it with bitterness. Sometimes there is pain, difficult moments, though not so much for what I experienced. I remember the faces of the women, mostly from state prison, where I spent 16 and a half years in maximum security.” There, she shared with marginalized, mistreated, discriminated, and raped women, who she never judged, understanding that their conduct, “often perverse,” was the result of those experiences. She describes prison as “institutions of pain,” and in the last 9 years of prison, she was with women who had killed their children. “And I, who had never had children, it was something I had to deal with, to look at them and not judge them. That requires a different perspective than what prevails in society… to get out of that mold, to break the mold.”

Alicia doesn’t deny that “in prison there was torture intended to drive us crazy and really to destroy us. But they didn’t break our human soul, nor the soul connected to a very deep identity. It is not just my identity as a woman, but also the right of a nation to take the concept of freedom to other levels. Puerto Rico has the inherent right to defend national dignity. That’s what our jailers intended to stop with all those years behind bars. It was a constant struggle with those jailers.”

Now she describes herself as “a volcano that is moved and moves,” with “a lot that wants to come out,” but not in a traditional way. Among the things she likes, she says, “I love to draw and paint,” and warns that “you have to be patient…” And she has been achieving that patience, in the process of sowing a seed and harvesting its fruit. A process that compares to human beings. “Often, we don’t want to let the seed germinate little by little. You want to be running, looking outside. But the human being must look within, touch bottom.” Even when you recognize that “I don’t know much about planting seeds, (but) I am trying to understand and enter into that world, because I am the daughter of farmers; I come from the mountains. It’s in our blood.”
In her narrative, she doesn’t forget her still imprisoned compañeros. “Oscar, Berti and Avelino”… “this isn’t a time of desperation for them. One looks and observes as does the farmer. Is a storm coming? Then we prepare for the storm, because the storm passes. You watch and you know when, whether or not the sun comes out, that the seed is in the earth, protected until it can grow, until the right conditions.”

See article, “NBHRN Call to Re-Energize Campaign to Free Oscar and Carlos, HostosCC 12-12-09.” for slide show.

Avelino agradece a sus familiares y amigos la solidaridad en las ‘Octavitas pa Avelino’

http://pr.indymedia.org/news/2010/01/41299.php

El prisionero político puertorriqueño Avelino González Claudio agradeció la celebración de las ‘Octavitas pa Avelino’ el pasado sábado 16 de enero de 2010 y convocadas por el Comité de Amigos y Familiares de Avelino cuyo fin es luchar por la excarcelación del compañero.

En un mensaje enviado desde la prisión Avelino nos dice:

“Para mí, ustedes representan un rayo de esperanza y estímulo para perseverar y seguir luchando. He recibido muchas postales de Navidad de hermanos de diferentes partes del mundo. Gracias por ayudarme a mantenerme vivo. Siempre estaré en la lucha. Estoy físicamente lejos de mi patria, pero la llevo en mi alma. Mi orgullo patrio está presente en todas mis acciones. Una vez más agradezco su solidaridad”.

Decenas de personas asistieron a esta fiesta en la culminación de la tradición boricua con el objetivo de recaudar fondos para cubrir los gastos legales y el traslado de familiares que visitan al preso. Actualmente las visitas, las donaciones económicas y la comunicación con Avelino está limitada por el gobierno de Estados Unidos a sólo cinco familiares inmediatos. Las aportaciones solidarias con este luchador se deben canalizar a través del Comité Familiares y Amigos de Avelino González Claudio.

En la actividad se presentaron varios artistas solidarios, entre ellos Gamalier Pagán, Flora Santiago y Tito Auger quienes ofrecieron de su talento rodeados de comida típica, dominó y fresco ambiente en los campos de Cupey. Además, la ex-prisionera política Dylcia Pagán presentó un documental titulado ‘Dos Héroes’ dedicado a los también prisioneros políticos Oscar López y Carlos Alberto Torres. Este último está a la expectativa de salir en libertad bajo palabra después de estar alrededor de 30 años tras las rejas.

A los visitantes se nos exhortó a continuar atentos y cooperando activamente con la lucha por la excarcelación de nuestro compañero.

www.masenlucha.org

On January 19, 2010, Carlos Alberto Torres attended a video hearing presided over by a U.S. Parole Commission hearing examiner whose task was to consider the disciplinary charges stemming from last January, and to make a recommendation for what should happen with respect to his request to be released on parole. Carlos Alberto answered the questions posed, and his attorney Jan Susler asked that the Parole Commission release him on parole as previously recommended, regardless of the wrongful charges. She pointed out the vast, ongoing support for his release, and argued that there is absolutely no risk in releasing him, as evidenced by the impressive example of his compatriots who were released by presidential commutation in 1999. The hearing examiner then made a favorable recommendation. Download the letter here.

Attached is the letter to the parole board. We want to try to get in as many as possible by next Tuesday to show them how much support Carlos has.  Please sign the attached letter and mail it into the Parole Board.  The address is on the letter.

Download petition here.

http://claridadpuertorico.com/content.html?news=28FC2CD9304856266F4103385A5DD5CA

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) of the United States government continues to obstruct the parole of Puerto Rican political prisoner Carlos Alberto Torres, while Torres is supposedly set for a hearing with the U.S. Parole Commission’s (USPC) hearing examiner next Tuesday, January 19.

Several related, coinciding facts appear to be the responsibility of the BOP, including that on December 9, 2009, prison authorities at FCI Pekin, Illinois, classified the Puerto Rican in a “high security” group, allegedly for his “association with domestic terrorism.” As a result, Carlos Alberto was denied access to email, which all the other prisoners are being granted. When Torres asked why he was classified into this group after 29 years of prison and exemplary conduct, and that this could affect the recommendation for parole, he was offered no explanation, verbally or in writing.

Attorney Jan Susler, legal advisor to the Puerto Rican political prisoner, revealed that Carlos Alberto learned of his next parole hearing only recently, after a prison official told him that on November 24, the USPC had told the prison they wanted to convene another hearing to address the disciplinary issue.

The chain of tactics of provocative incidents by the BOP dates back to December of 2008, when prison authorities moved a group of ten prisoners to Torres’ unit. On more than one occasion, Torres asked that two of the cellmates be moved, but his request was denied. On January 14, 2009, two days before Torres was scheduled for a parole hearing, prison officials searched his unit and claimed to have found a shank in one of the bathrooms. This resulted in postponing the parole hearing.

Although one of the prisoners in the unit, Maurice Wilkins, took responsibility for possession of the shank and said that no one else was responsible, on January 22, prison officials found Torres and the rest of the prisoners guilty of knowing about the shanks, a finding resulting in a punishment of 60 days in segregation, no visits, no phone calls, no access to the commissary, among other restrictions. On January 31, Wilkins again assumed responsibility, this time in a sworn statement. Due to this, and the support of a campaign of letters sent to the BOP denouncing the process and demanding a new hearing, in April the regional director admitted that there had been errors in the process, and sent the incident report back to the prison to be revised. In May, prison officials responded that the incident report had been dismissed.

Finally, the parole hearing was held on May 26, 2009, via video conference with the USPC hearing examiner, who recommended that Carlos Alberto be paroled in April of 2010. Carlos Alberto will have served exactly 30 years of prison on the targeted date. The final decision, whether to adopt the hearing examiner’s recommendation, was to take place within 21 days. But once again, between June and July, prison officials made false accusations against Carlos Alberto, and subjected him to a new hearing. On July 28, the USPC informed him they would postpone their decision for 90 days, pending the resolution of the disciplinary charges.

Not satisfied with this result, in September (2009) a prison “intelligence officer and translator” told Carlos Alberto that they had received “orders from above” that they were to monitor his movements, and that in the future his correspondence in Spanish was to be translated outside the prison, which could delay his mail for a month.

If he had gone to the hearing without incident, and the USPC had adopted the recommendation of the hearing officer, Carlos Alberto would have had the right to be released in October of 2009, to what is known as a “halfway house,” and in April of 2010 to be released on parole.

As a result of the situation, a campaign is being waged in Puerto Rico as well as in the United States, sending letters to BOP director Harley G. Lappin, to stop harassing Carlos Alberto, to expunge the finding of guilt from his file, and to inform the parole commission he has done so.

“In terms of law, in terms of justice, if these hearings are not pro forma, Carlos Alberto should be paroled in April, in conformity with the recommendation of the hearing examiner who presided over the previous hearing. Under no moral or political justification, under no sense of justice, should he remain in prison,” responded attorney Eduardo Villanueva, concerning the hearing set for January 19.

The spokesperson for the Human Rights Committee, which wages the campaign for the release of all Puerto Rican political prisoners, observed that Carlos Alberto is one of the longest held political prisoners in the West, and the longest held Puerto Rican in prison for political reasons.

Carlos Alberto Torres and Oscar Rivera were accused of the conceptual offense of seditious conspiracy, and Villanueva called irrational the United States government’s insistence on keeping the Puerto Rican independentistas in prison.

Avelino still being denied medical attention

Family and friends of political prisoner Avelino González Claudio are hoping that the authorities of Suffield Correctional Center and the State University of Connecticut comply in the next two weeks with a court order that González Claudio receive medical attention from a specialist.

The health of this independentista fighter began to be affected a few months after being moved to the prison in the state of Connecticut, following his arrest on the Island in February of 2008, after almost 15 years in clandestinity. Juan González Pedrosa, one of Avelino’s sons, said that he visited his father in early December, and that the symptoms of trembling and lack of coordination in his hands and legs have progressed at an alarming rate. It was clear that before being in prison, his father was in good health. In March of 2008, the first symptoms began, along with a condition of high blood pressure. From that moment, his family, friends and attorneys have made effort administratively, and with a letter writing campaign, to get him the specialized medical attention he needs.

As a result of these efforts, González reported, they learned that doctors from the two prisons where his father has been recommended that he be seen by a specialist, but the Medical Plan Advisory Board refused service on three occasions. He stated that in Connecticut, the prison population’s health services are privatized, with a contract with the State University.

Because there is no federal prison in Connecticut, González Claudio is held in the maximum security institution at Suffield, CT. Visits and telephone calls are limited to immediate family. Juan González described his father as very thin, and that the trembling in his hands has for the moment not allowed him to respond to the many letters he receives. He also warned that the prison does not allow people to send him money directly. Anyone interested in making a contribution can do so with the Avelino González Committee, Apartado 10363, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 00922.