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In September, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman sat down with longtime political prisoner and Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier for his first extended television and radio broadcast interview since his release to home confinement in February. Before his commutation by former President Joe Biden, the 81-year-old Peltier spent nearly 50 years behind bars. Peltier has always maintained his innocence for the 1975 killing of two FBI officers. He is expected to serve the remainder of his life sentences under house arrest at the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Nation in Belcourt, North Dakota. In a wide-ranging conversation, we spoke to Peltier about his case, his time in prison, his childhood spent at an American Indian boarding school and his later involvement in the American Indian Movement (AIM) and more.
"We still have to live under that, that fear of losing our identity, losing our culture, our religion," Peltier says about his continued commitment to Indigenous rights. "The struggle still goes on for me. I'm not going to give up."
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252 Venezuelan immigrants in the United States were flown to El Salvador in the dead of night and indefinitely imprisoned at the Salvadoran mega-prison CECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center. The detainees had no ability to communicate to the outside world before they were finally released to Venezuela in a prisoner exchange. The men were "subjected to beatings almost daily upon arrival," says Noah Bullock, executive director of Cristosal who co-authroed a report with Human Rights Watch documenting human rights abuses and torture in the prison.
The report also found that the prison guards were "clearly trying to hide their identities while they were torturing these Venezuelan migrants," says Juan Pappier, Americas deputy director at Human Rights Watch.
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