Obama Commutes Sentence of F.A.L.N. Member Oscar Lopez Rivera

NY Times

President Obama on Tuesday commuted the sentence of a man convicted for his role in a Puerto Rican nationalist group linked to more than 100 bombings in New York and other cities in the 1970s and 1980s.

The man, Oscar Lopez Rivera, was serving a 70-year sentence after being convicted of numerous charges, including seditious conspiracy, a charge used for those plotting to overthrow the United States government.

He was linked to the radical group known as the F.A.L.N., the Spanish acronym for the Armed Forces of National Liberation, and was one of more than a dozen group members convicted in the 1980s.

Under Mr. Obama’s commutation order, Mr. Lopez Rivera’s prison sentence will expire May 17. It was one of 209 grants of commutation by the president announced Tuesday.

The F.A.L.N., which waged a violent campaign for the independence of Puerto Rico, was considered by the authorities to be among the most elusive and resilient terrorist groups to operate in the United States. Among its notable attacks was a bombing at Fraunces Tavern in New York in 1975 that killed four people.

The group was known for its tight-knit membership, fanatical zeal and hit-and-run tactics, as exemplified by the bombings of four government buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn on New Year’s Eve in 1982 that seriously wounded three police officers.

Mr. Lopez Rivera was not specifically charged in the Fraunces Tavern bombing but more broadly with, among other things, the interstate transportation of firearms with the intent to commit violent crimes, and transportation of explosives with intent to kill and injure people and to destroy government buildings and property.

President Bill Clinton offered Mr. Lopez Rivera and other members of the F.A.L.N. clemency in 1999, a decision that stirred an emotional debate. Mr. Clinton said their sentences were out of proportion with their offenses.

While 12 prisoners accepted the offer and were freed, Mr. Lopez Rivera rejected the chance to reduce his sentence because it did not include all of the group’s members, his lawyer, Jan Susler, said at the time. If he had accepted the agreement, she said, he would have been eligible for release in 2009.

A senior Obama administration official said on Tuesday that Mr. Lopez Rivera, 74, had served nearly half of his life in prison and was the only F.A.L.N. member still in prison.

In 1981, he was sentenced to 55 years for seditious conspiracy and in 1988 was sentenced to an additional 15 years for conspiring to escape from a prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

The news on Tuesday was received with jubilation by some on social media.

On Twitter, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” wrote: “Sobbing with gratitude here in London. OSCAR LOPEZ RIVERA IS COMING HOME. THANK YOU, @POTUS.”

Over the years, supporters of Mr. Lopez Rivera have tried to have him freed on parole. The National Boricua Human Rights Network in 2011 said that he posed no threat to the public and that others who were released went on to have productive, trouble-free lives.

A lawyer for Mr. Lopez Rivera, Jan Susler, said in an interview on Tuesday that there was widespread support for the commutation of his sentence.

“Really the only controversy is that this man was still in prison after 35 years after not being convicted of hurting or killing anyone,” she said. [MORE]