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Puerto Rican Nationalists

Between 1980 and 1985, 30 Puerto Rican nationalists were accused of conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government in Puerto Rico using armed force. A few others were arrested and prosecuted in the mid-1990s. According to government officials, the nationalists were supporters of the Armed National Liberation Front (FALN), which they claimed was responsible for staging more than 130 bomb attacks on political and military targets in the United States. Most of these attacks occurred in New York and Chicago between 1974 and 1983 and left six people dead and several wounded. Ten of the 14 men and women arrested between 1980 and 1983 received sentences ranging from 50 to 90 years, an average of 70.8 years for the convicted men and 72.8 years for the convicted women. These prison terms were 19 times longer than the average sentence given out the same year for crimes such as murder and rape.

The Trials

When captured, the Puerto Rican nationalists declared themselves to be combatants in a war to liberate Puerto Rico, and they asked to be treated as prisoners of war. They further argued that the U.S. courts did not have jurisdiction to prosecute them as criminals and petitioned instead for their cases to be handled by an international court. The U.S. government did not recognize either demand.

Of those arrested in the 1980s, none were found guilty of murder, bombing, or hurting a person. Instead, some were charged with illegal possession of weapons and explosives, robbery, and transportation of a stolen vehicle after brief trials in Chicago. Perhaps because no solid evidence existed linking the accused to specific crimes, most of the Puerto Rican radicals were convicted on sedition charges on the grounds that they did not recognize the authority of the U.S. government. This charge allowed federal prosecutors to treat all defendants as coconspirators, regardless of what specific acts they had committed.

The trials themselves were relatively short. However, before they got to court, some detainees were held in preventive detention for as long as three years without bail. Of those arrested in the 1980s, 13 refused to participate in their trials, arguing that they did not recognize U.S. legal jurisdiction over their cases. As a result, most of the accused neither put up a defense nor appointed a lawyer.

The Prisoners

Most of the accused were students, teachers, or involved in some other professional occupation. Several of them were active in Puerto Rican neighborhood projects and cultural affairs in Chicago, Illinois, where the trials took place. All of the prisoners were arrested as young men and women, with most aged in their late twenties or thirties. Many also had young families.

Jose Solis-Jordan, who was found guilty of bombing a U.S. Army recruitment office in 1979 by a federal jury in Chicago, provides a good example of the background and treatment of the other activists. Three FBI agents claimed that Solis, a professor at the University of Puerto Rico and father of five, confessed to carrying out the bombing. However, they did not present a written statement signed by the accused nor a valid audio- or videotape proving that he made such a confession. Instead, Rafael Marrero, a paid FBI informant, provided the main testimony against Solis. Marreo's story was bolstered by a fabricated confession that one of the police officers later admitted writing, and by an alleged English translation of a largely inaudible tape of a conversation in Spanish. Marrero, who was actively involved in an operation against members of the Puerto Rican independence movement, admitted to receiving $119,000 and complete immunity from the FBI. The impartiality of the case was further compromised by the absence of any Latinos on the jury and by the fact that the jury's foreperson was an employee of the Justice Department.

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