Vol. 75/No. 27      July 25, 2011

Native American activist Leonard Peltier, who has been imprisoned for 35 years, was thrown in “the hole” June 27 in the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. His attorney Robert Bryan says prison officials claim Peltier tampered with a light switch and that a supporter in the United Kingdom mailed him a silver coin. Peltier is serving a double life sentence on frame-up charges of killing two FBI agents during a government siege of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975.

In 2010 Gerardo Hernández, one of the Cuban Five, was held in solitary confinement for two weeks. The cell he was in had no air conditioning, while the temperature outside was more than 100 degrees. To get enough oxygen, he had to lie on the floor to suck air from the crack under the door. The shower had only scalding hot water.

The Cuban Five—Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González—were arrested in 1998 in Miami, where they had been tracking the activities of Cuban American paramilitary groups there with a long history of armed assaults and acts of sabotage against Cuba—activities tacitly supported by Washington. They were held for 17 months in solitary confinement before their trial to pressure them to testify for the U.S. government. None of the five broke.

The five remain in jail, serving sentences ranging from 15 years for René González to double life plus 15 years for Hernández. Hernández was sentenced to life on murder conspiracy charges for the Cuban government’s decision on Feb. 24, 1996, to shoot down two hostile aircraft that had repeatedly and provocatively invaded its airspace.

Solitary confinement has also been used against fighters for Puerto Rican independence. Oscar López Rivera, convicted of “seditious conspiracy” for opposing the island’s colonial subjugation, was kept in the hole from 1986 to 1998. Jailed since 1981, he remains one of the longest-held political prisoners in the world.

The other two Puerto Rican independence fighters currently behind bars, Norberto and Avelino González Claudio, have both been subjected to solitary confinement.
 
 
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Calif. inmates fight lockdowns, punishment of groups by race  
 
 
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