INFORMATION ABOUT THE PUERTO RICAN POLITICAL PRISONERS

Oscar Lopez Rivera

was born in San Sebastian, Puerto Rico on January 6, 1943.  At the age of 12, he moved to Chicago with his family.  He was a well-respected community activist and a prominent independence leader for many years prior to his arrest.  Oscar was one of the founders of the Rafael Cancel Miranda High School at, no w 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 Statesville Prison in Illinois.

He was active in various community struggles, mainly in the area of health care, employment and police brutality.  He also participated in the development of the Committee to Free the Five Puerto Rican Nationalists.  In 1975, he was forced underground, along with other comrades.  He as captured on May 29, 1981, after 5 years of being persecuted by the FBI as on of the most feared fugitives from US “justice.”

Oscar, who has a daughter named Clarissa, is currently serving a 55-year sentence for seditious conspiracy and other charges. He was convicted of conspiracy to escape along with Jaime Delgado (a veteran independence leader), Dora Garcia (a prominent community activist) and Kojo Bomani-Sababu, a New Afrikan political prisoner.

Oscar was one of 12 Puerto Rican political prisoners offered some form of leniency by the Clinton Administration in the fall of 1999.   According to the Chicago Sun Times, he “declined the president’s offer, which still would have left him 10 years to serve on conspiracy to escape charges.  Now he faces at least 20 more years in prison.  His sister, Zenaida Lopez, said he turned the offer down because he would be on parole. “Accepting what they are offering him is like prison outside of prison,” she said.  Zenaida Lopez said her brother “was in total agreement with the decision of the 11 others to take the conditional clemency.”  Oscar is presently in prison Terre Haute, Indiana and his release date is 7/27/27.

Oscar López Rivera
#87651-024 USP Terre Haute
Box 12015
Terre Haute, IN 47801

Carlos Alberto Torres

was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico on September 19, 1952.  His parents moved to New York, finally settling in Chicago.  He studied in the University of Illinois in Carbondale and Chicago.  He studies sociology at Southern Illinois University and the University of Illinois at Chicago.   Carlos Alberto was involved in the struggle to recruit more Latinos to the University, against racism, and police abuse.  Carlos was one of the founders of the Rafael Cancel Miranda Puerto Rican High School, now known as the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School and participated in the Committee to Free the 5 Nationalists.

In 1976, Carlos was forced to go underground and was on the FBI’s most wanted list.  He was captured along with other comrades and sentenced to 78 years on charges of seditious conspiracy, among other charges.

Although the Clinton Administration offered clemency to 12 Puerto Rican political prisoners in the fall of 1999, no leniency was granted to Carlos Torres, who prosecutors described as a leader of the Fuerza Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (FALN), an underground organization which fought for Puerto Rico’s independence in the 1970’s and 80’s.  His release date is 2024.  He is currently in prison in Oxford, Wisconsin.

Carlos Alberto Torres
#88976-024
FCI Oxford
PO BOX 1000
Oxford, WI 53952

Haydee Beltran Torres

was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico on June 7, 1955.  When Haydee was 12 years old, her parents moved to Chicago.  At Tuley High School, she organized a boycott that demanded the firing of a racist principal.  Haydee attended the University of Illinois where she was an outspoken defender of Latino students’ rights.

Haydee was forced underground in 1976 and was captured April 4, 1989.  She has been sentenced to life in prison on charges including seditious conspiracy.  Haydee was the first POW to receive a life sentence.  She was kept in total isolation from the other prisoners of war and was transferred to a special control unit, which limited visits.  It was a years before she was allowed to see her family.

At the MCC in Chicago, she was classified as “no visitors allowed.”  Haydee was subject to physical abuse in interrogations for refusing to implicate her comrades in unfounded crimes.  This was done several times by FBI and other government agents.  These and other inhumane acts by the US government have led to serious injuries, which prison medical directors have misdiagnosed; also, Haydee has received injections of unknown medications.

Haydee Beltrán
#88462-024
FCI Tallahasee
501 Capital Circle NE 
Tallahasee, FL 32301

AVELINO GONZALEZ CLAUDIO

The PR Freedom Committee denounces this LATEST ATTACK on the Puerto Rican Independence Movement

Since the assassination of Filiberto Ojeda Rios in 2005, the FBI in Puerto Rico has harassed and assaulted various pro-Puerto Rican Independence activists in their witch hunt against Los Macheteros; a clandestine revolutionary independence organization Filiberto Ojeda Rios led.

In the past few months, LUIS FRATICELLI, the director of the FBI in Puerto Rico, has intensified these acts of repression by issuing Grand Jury subpoenas to three young Puerto Rican Activists in New York and Puerto Rico.
This past Thursday February 7th, the FBI in Puerto Rico arrested Avelino Gonzalez Claudio, anti-colonial combatant and Machetero, for his participation in the Wells Fargo Incident in the 1980s.

To write Claudio:
Avelino Gonzalez- Claudio # 357422
Unit 1 West Cell 213
PO Box 665
Somers, CT 06071