Leonard Peltier Tests Positive For COVID-19
01/28/2022 10:53pm EST
Leonard Peltier, the ailing 77-year-old Native American rights activist who has been pleading for help from prison amid coronavirus lockdowns and still hasn’t received a booster shot, has tested positive for COVID-19.
“Today, Leonard tested positive for COVID,” Peltier’s attorney Kevin Sharp told HuffPost late Friday. “We are all very concerned, as is Leonard. He wanted people to know that he sends his love and appreciation for the years everyone has fought for him. And should he make it through this, he intends to continue speaking out for Native rights.”
Peltier began feeling “like shit” on Thursday and had a “rough night” of painful and persistent coughing, Sharp said. “He told me, ‘I hope this is just a bad cold, but I have never had a cold like this before.’”
Peltier has now been placed in quarantine for 10 days.
Peltier has been in prison for 45 years without any evidence that he committed a crime. The FBI and U.S. Attorney Office charged him with the 1975 murders of two FBI agents during a shootout on a Native American reservation ― something he has long said he didn’t do, even when it meant he could have been paroled if he’d said he did. His trial was riddled with misconduct, and even the U.S. attorney who helped put Peltier in prison decades ago is now pleading with President Joe Biden to grant him clemency because, he says, federal officials never had evidence that he committed a crime.
Read the article at HuffPost
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/leonard-peltier-covid-positive_n_61f4a8f2e4b04f9a12bd7138
Democracy Now!
Leonard Peltier Calls Prison Conditions “Torture” Amid COVID Lockdowns and Neglect
Jailed Native American activist Leonard Peltier has described prison as a “torture chamber” amid constant coronavirus lockdowns. Peltier, who suffers from multiple health conditions, says he and others held at the Florida federal prison have yet to receive their COVID booster shots and describes worsening neglect and uncertainty. In a statement, Peltier writes, “Left alone and without attention is like a torture chamber for the sick and old.” Seventy-seven-year-old Peltier is one of the U.S.'s longest-serving political prisoners, convicted of killing two FBI agents on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. He has long maintained his innocence.
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