Oscar López Rivera

Early years and personal life

Oscar López Rivera was born in San Sebastián, Puerto Rico, on January 6, 1943. His family moved to the mainland United States when he was nine years old. At the age of 14, he moved to Chicago to live with a sister. At age 18 he was drafted into the army and served in the Vietnam War and awarded the Bronze Star. When he returned to Illinois in 1967, he became a community activist, advocating for housing for the Puerto Rican community, bilingual education and Latino recruitment in the university system. In the late 1970s he began to advocate for Puerto Rican independence. López Rivera was one of the founders of La Escuelita Puertorriqueña, now known as the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School and the Juan Antonio Corretjer Puerto Rican Cultural Center. He was a community organizer for the Northwest Community Organization (NCO), ASSPA, ASPIRA and the 1st Congregational Church of Chicago. He helped to found FREE, a half-way house for convicted drug addicts, and ALAS, an educational program for Latino prisoners at Stateville Prison in Illinois.

FALN activities

López Rivera joined the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN) was a Marxist-Leninist organization which in the 1970s fought to make Puerto Rico an independent communist nation. The FALN was involved in more than 100 bombings in New York, Chicago and other cities, including the 1975 bombing at Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan which killed four people. The FALN was one of the targets of the first terrorism task force in the United States; the US Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), established in April 1980, had as one of its goals to pursue threats from the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN).

López Rivera was first linked to the criminal conspiracy carried out by the FALN in 1976. That year, a burglar was arrested in Chicago attempting to peddle stolen explosives. The burglar led the Chicago police to an apartment, nearly devoid of furniture, but in which there were boxes containing explosives and bomb-making paraphernalia, weapons, clothing, wigs, and photographs of Chicago buildings, maps of the city, and several FALN documents, including a manual for guerrilla warfare detailing deceptive practices and rules of clandestine living titled Posición Política. This bomb factory was linked to the owner of the apartment, Carlos Torres, López Rivera, and their respective wives, Marie Haydée Beltrán Torres and Ida Luz Rodríguez. All four became fugitives after this discovery. The four were also linked to the National Commission on Hispanic Affairs (NCHA) of the Protestant Episcopal Church, a charitable organization based in New York City that was meant to fund projects to assist Hispanic communities throughout the United States. In 1977, 11 FALN members, including Luz Rodriguez and Torres Beltrán, were arrested trying to rob an armored truck in Evanston, Illinois. López Rivera was apprehended a few years later when, according to police, he ran a stop sign in a Chicago suburb and provided a false Oregon driver's license.

At the time of their arrest, López Rivera and the others declared themselves combatants in an anti-colonial war against the United States to liberate Puerto Rico from U.S. domination. They invoked prisoner of war status. They stated that U.S. courts did not have jurisdiction to treat them as criminals, and they petitioned for their cases to be handed over to an international court that would determine their status. The U.S. Government did not recognize their request.

Trial

López Rivera was tried in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in 1980–81. The charges included armed robbery and for being a recruiter and bomb-making trainer in the FALN. López Rivera admitted committing every act with which he was charged, but declared himself a political prisoner and refused to take part in most of the trial proceedings. In August 1981, Alfredo Méndez, one of those arrested in Evanston who had become an informant, testified that López Rivera taught him how to make bomb detonation devices and gun silencers. He also testified that the first bombing in which Méndez was to have taken part planned to target the hotel that housed the offices for the Democratic Party. Méndez stated that other bombings were scheduled to occur simultaneously in New York City, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. Speaking on his own behalf during closing arguments, López Rivera stated, "Puerto Rico will be a free and socialist country" and denounced Méndez as a traitor. López Rivera was convicted of "seditious conspiracy, use of force to commit robbery, interstate transportation of firearms and ammunition to aid in the commission of a felony, and interstate transportation of stolen vehicles".

The pre-sentencing report stated that López Rivera had been:

personally involved in bombing and incendiary attacks across the country for at least five years prior to Méndez's [sic] involvement and knowledge, has been a prime recruiter for members of the underground terrorist group, and has been a key trainer in bombing, sabotage and other techniques of guerilla warfare. He has set up a series of safehouses and bomb factories across the country, the searches of which have uncovered literally hundreds of pounds of dynamite and other forms of high explosive, blasting caps, timing devices, huge caches of weapons and stockpiles of ammunition, silencers, sawed-off shotguns, disguises, stolen and altered identity documents, and the proceeds of the armed robberies of locations such as a National Guard Armory, Chicago's Carter-Mondale Re-Election headquarters, radio and communications companies, as well as a variety of stolen vehicles.

U.S. District Judge Thomas R. McMillen sentenced López Rivera to 55 years in prison, calling him an "incorrigible law violator".

In 1995, in interviews after his conviction, López Rivera neither confirmed nor denied his affiliation with the FALN and disowned any personal involvement in the bombing deaths linked to the FALN. Without advocating violence, he asserted his belief in the legitimacy of political violence: "By international law, a colonized people has the right to fight against colonialism by any means necessary, including the use of force."

1988 conspiracy conviction for escape plot

On August 20, 1986, a federal grand jury indicted López Rivera and several others for planning to engineer his escape, and that of another inmate, from Leavenworth. The government described plans to use hand grenades, plastic explosives, blasting caps, and a helicopter. The government also claimed it knew of a failed 1983 escape plot, but had not arrested the conspirators in order to maintain surveillance of their activities.

The jury deliberated for four days and returned guilty verdicts against all four defendants on December 31, 1987. López Rivera was convicted on five of the eight counts on which he had been charged. His attorney continued to charge the government with devising the conspiracy. She said: "The way this case was done was down and dirty. The Government, through their informants, agents provocateur and undercover F.B.I. agents spent millions trying to create a conspiracy to get these defendants."

On February 27, 1988, U.S. District Judge William Hart sentenced López Rivera to fifteen years in prison. He said: "Those who take up the sword die by the sword." In December, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected the defendants' appeal, which contended that the government had masterminded the conspiracy.

Supporters

For many years, numerous national and international organizations criticized López Rivera' incarceration categorizing it as political imprisonment. Luis Nieves Falcón, a social science professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, has said that López Rivera is "among the longest held political prisoners in the history of Puerto Rico and in the world."

Cases involving the release of other Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners have been categorized as cases of political prisoners, with some being more vocal than others.

Prison experience

After spending twelve years in maximum security prisons in Marion, Illinois and Florence, Colorado, López Rivera was transferred to the general prison population at the federal correctional facility in Terre Haute, Indiana.

His supporters have accused the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons of isolating López Rivera on the basis of his political beliefs. For twelve of his 32 years in prison, López Rivera has been held in solitary confinement in maximum security prisons.

In 2006, a special committee of the United Nations called for the release from United States prisons of all convicted for actions related to Puerto Rican independence who had served more than 25 years, whom it termed "political prisoners".

Conditional clemency offer (1999)

On August 11, 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton offered clemency to López Rivera and 15 other convicted FALN members, subject to the condition of "renouncing the use or threatened use of violence for any purpose" in writing. Some had fines reduced to the amounts they already paid and others had their sentences reduced to time already served. Two had their sentences reduced but would still have time to serve, including López-Rivera, whose seventy-year sentence would be reduced to about 44 and a half years, allowing him to leave prison in December 2025. None of those offered clemency were directly involved in FALN bombings that resulted in deaths and injuries. A White House spokesman said: "The President feels they deserved to serve serious sentences for these crimes, but not sentences that were far out of proportion to the nature of the crimes they were convicted for." President Jimmy Carter had pardoned other Puerto Rican Nationalists on three occasions, including four who wounded members of Congress in an attack on the U.S. House of Representatives in 1954 and one who plotted to assassinate Harry Truman in 1950. Fourteen of the sixteen accepted Clinton's conditions. Of those, some were no longer in prison, eleven were released on September 10, and one had five more years to serve in prison.

Clinton had been urged to grant clemency by Coretta Scott King; several religious leaders, including retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Cardinal John J. O'Connor of the Archdiocese of New York, the Right Rev. Paul Moore Jr., the retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York; and by such New York Democrats as Representatives Jose E. Serrano, Charles B. Rangel, Nydia M. Velazquez and Eliot L. Engel. In September, Congressman Luis Gutiérrez said that the charge of seditious conspiracy against the FALN was "a political charge", and Congressman John J. LaFalce said that it misrepresented López Rivera's "desire to have independence for Puerto Rico from the United States".

Gloria Quinones, an activist who had called for the release of Puerto Rican nationalists from prison, expressed disappointment with its terns: "This is an olive branch that the President has extended in the process of reconciliation between the United States and Puerto Rico, but it's a very scrawny one." She particularly objected to the requirement that the prisoners not associate with each other upon release. On September 21, the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico Carlos Romero Barceló supported Clinton's offer and denounced López Rivera for refusing to renounce violence. He told a committee evaluating the pardons that the FALN had operated "by means of violence, threats and terror" and that all FALN members endorsed violence.

Critical reception

The clemency offer was opposed by bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress, which passed a Joint Resolution condemning Clinton's action in mid-September. It passed the U.S. House of Representatives on a vote of 311–4) and U.S. Senate by a vote of 95–2. The Joint Resolution repeatedly labeled the 16 Clinton had offered conditional clemency as "terrorists". Those opposed to the clemency offer pointed to the several charges on which Oscar López had been convicted, including armed robbery, recruiting for the FALN, and training others to make bombs and silencers.

Former New York City police officer Richard Pascarella, who was blinded and lost five fingers on his right hand in an FALN bombing, also opposed clemency for FALN members, stating: "They will reorganize. They will again voice their ideology on the American public with a bomb and with a gun." Some Republicans said it showed President Clinton was trying to build support in New York's Puerto Rican community for his wife's campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2000. New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said: "All of a sudden this president grants clemency, and does it on conditions. And he's a president who wants to make a stand against terrorism, so it raises very legitimate questions."

Rejection

López Rivera rejected the offer because one of its conditions was that he renounce the use of terrorism. Others provided other explanations. His sister, Zenaida López, said he refused the offer because on parole, he would be in "prison outside prison." Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi said that López Rivera's "primary reason" was the fact that similar clemency had not been offered to Carlos Torres.

Opposition to clemency

Obama's decision to commute López Rivera's sentence was condemned by an editorial in the New Hampshire Union Leader, and by Charles Krauthammer and Charles Lane. On January 20, 2017, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Joe Connor, the son of one of the victims of the Fraunces Tavern bombing, condemning Obama's decision to commute López Rivera's sentence.

Support for clemency

López Rivera's continued imprisonment was opposed by parts of the Puerto Rican community in the United States, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere.

Several members of Congress called for his release, including Alan Grayson, Jose Serrano, and Luis Gutiérrez. Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi did so as well.

His release has been demanded by 10 Nobel Peace Prize winners, Coretta Scott King, President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Senator Bernie Sanders as well as an international coalition of human rights, and religious, labor, and business leaders including the United Council of Churches of Christ, United Methodist Church, Baptist Peace Fellowship, Episcopal Church of Puerto Rico, and the Catholic Archbishop of San Juan.

Timeline

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2016

2017

Commutation of sentence

On January 17, 2017, President Obama commuted López Rivera's sentence. His release is scheduled for May 17. On February 9, 2017, he was released from the Terre Haute prison and moved to Puerto Rico to serve the last three months of his sentence under house arrest. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, one of the Puerto Rico politicians accompanying Lopez Rivera to Puerto Rico, said that she plans to give Lopez Rivera a job in her administration. According to US Congressman Luis Gutierrez, the release to Puerto Rico came as a surprise to many, as "most prisoners go to halfway houses, [but] he got to go home to be with his daughter." López Rivera is currently living with his daughter at their home in San Sabastian, Puerto Rico.

Writings