Vol. 74/No. 22      June 7, 2010

Torres, now 58, was arrested in April 1980 along with 10 other supporters of independence for Puerto Rico and accused of “seditious conspiracy” and armed robbery and of being a “terrorist” and member of the Armed Forces of National Liberation of Puerto Rico. At one point in his June 1980 trial, Torres was gagged for speaking Spanish in court.

López Rivera was arrested a year later and found guilty of similar charges.

Puerto Rico has been a U.S. colony since 1898, when U.S. troops wrested control of the island from Spain. Residents of Puerto Rico are subject to U.S. laws, courts, and military service. Puerto Rico has been a significant source of profit for U.S. corporations.

In 1999 then-president William Clinton offered to pardon or commute the sentences of 14 Puerto Rican political prisoners, but not Torres. Two of them, Antonio Camacho Negrón and Oscar López, refused the offer because they did not want to accept onerous conditions on their freedom. Camacho was released in 2002.

Alejandro Molina, co-coordinator of the National Boricua Human Rights Network, said in a phone interview that Torres’s release “puts us in a good position to expand the campaign to demand the release of Oscar López.”

“Antonio called me and said he’s convinced that the letters of support for his freedom and protests from a wide range of people were what made his parole possible,” Molina said.

Over the last decade church groups, the main political parties in Puerto Rico, and prominent figures such as Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu have backed the call for freeing Torres.

A third Puerto Rican political prisoner, Avelino González Claudio, who was arrested in February 2008, agreed to a plea agreement on charges of conspiracy in relation to a 1983 robbery of a Wells Fargo truck. González, 67, who has Parkinson’s disease, accepted the deal in exchange for a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. Prosecutors allege the action was carried out to fund Los Macheteros, an armed group that backs Puerto Rican independence.
 
 
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