Chancellor Merkel must ask President Obama to speak out for Leonard Peltier’s release

The Society for Threatened Peoples STP (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker GfbV) appealed on Friday to Prime Minister Angela Merkel to take up the inheritance of Simon Wiesenthal and ask President Barack Obama to speak out for the release of the seriously ill imprisoned Indian human rights worker, Leonard Peltier. A pardon is for Peltier his last chance of living his remaining years in freedom, says the letter of the STP Chair, Tilman Zülch, to Angela Merkel, who is flying to the USA on Monday. "We do beg of you most sincerely to put in a good word for this Indian human rights worker who has now grown old in prison. This would be the fulfilling of a legacy of Simon Wiesenthal, a great man who for many years was a good and reliable friend of our human rights organisation.” Wiesenthal asked on 14.12.2000 in a letter to the then President Bill Clinton for Peltier to be released.

"The human right worker has spent the past 33 years in prison for a crime for which there are many indications that he was not guilty”, says the appeal of the STP. "The 65-year old has now spent more than half his life in prison. He is suffering from diabetes and heart disease. As a result of a stroke suffered some years ago he is nearly blind in one eye.”

In August 2009 the Parole Commission turned down Peltier’s application for release on probation although he has a house and place of work in his home reserve of Turtle Mountain in North Dakota. Peltier's next scheduled hearing will not be until 2024. It seems doubtful however that the then 80-year old will live that long.

Leonard Peltier was sentenced in 1977 to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment because two FBI agents were killed during a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Lakota Sioux Indians in the state of South Dakota. However a ballistic investigation has shown that the fatal shots did not come from Peltier’s weapon. Amnesty International has criticised the trial against Leonard Peltier as unfair and is also working for his pardon. A supposed eye-witness withdrew her testimony.

Further information can be provided by Yvonne Bangert, STP consultant for indigenous peoples, at E-Mail: indigene@gfbv.de