Alejandrina Torres

Alejandrina Torres (born June 18, 1939) is a Puerto Rican nationalist who was convicted and sentenced to 35 years for seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States.^[1] Torres was linked to the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), which claimed responsibility for numerous bombings. Her sentence was commuted by President Bill Clinton in 1999.^[2]

Early years and personal life

Alejandrina Torres was born in Puerto Rico in 1939. Her family emigrated to the United States when she was 11 years old. During the 1960s and 1970s, she was a leader in her community. She was a founding member and later a teacher at the Puerto Rican High School in Chicago. She later helped found Chicago's Betances Health Clinic and was active in boycotts of public schools which continued to mis-educate children and were hostile and racist towards their students' parents. At the First Congregational Church where she worked, she organized a variety of community programs. She also participated in the Committee to Free the Five Nationalists and later became a member of the Committee to Free the Puerto Rican Prisoners of War. At the time of her arrest in 1983 she was married to Reverend Jose A. Torres and had two daughters, Liza and Catalina, who were 16 and 11 years old respectively.

Seditious conspiracy

Torres was arrested in June 1983.^[3] She and other FALN members had been linked to more than 100 bombings or attempted bombings since 1974 in their attempt to achieve independence for Puerto Rico.^[4] At their trial proceedings, all of the arrested declared their status as prisoners of war, and refused to participate in the proceedings.^[5][6][7]

None of the bombings of which they were convicted resulted in deaths or injuries.^[4] Matos was given a 70-year federal sentence for seditious conspiracy and other charges.^[8] Among the other convicted Puerto Rican nationalists there were sentences of as long as 90 years in Federal prisons for offenses including sedition, possession of unregistered firearms, interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle, interference with interstate commerce by violence and interstate transportation of firearms with intent to commit a crime.^[4] None of those granted clemency were convicted in any of the actual bombings. Rather, they had been convicted on a variety of charges ranging from bomb making and conspiracy to armed robbery and firearms violations.^[9] They were all convicted for sedition, the act of attempting to overthrow the Government of the United States in Puerto Rico by force.^[8][10]

Human rights violations

Throughout her imprisonment, Torres was plagued by health problems which were aggravated by prison staff's attacks and an indifference to her medical needs. It took the federal prison system six years to place her in a regular women's prison. Two of those six years were spent in the underground Women's High Security Unit at Lexington. Kentucky. Amnesty International condemned the conditions in that unit as "deliberately and gratuitously oppressive" and as causing physical and psychological deterioration.^[11]

Torres was one of four subjects housed in an experimental prison unit in Kentucky.^[12] The High Security Unit (HSU) was a kind of prison within a prison, occupying the basement of the Federal Correctional Institute.^[13] Allegations were made that the unit was an experimental underground political prison that practiced isolation and sensory deprivation. It was finally closed by a federal judge after two years of protest by religious and human rights groups.^[14] She was then moved to the federal women's prison in Danbury, Connecticut, from which she was released in September, 1999.

Torres was also sexually assaulted multiple times in cases involving prison personnel with the assailants never being charged.^[11] The attacks occurred in three different prisons. The first assault took place when she was locked in a men's unit, permitting the men to exhibit themselves in front of her. In a second incident a male prison lieutenant forced her to put her head between his knees and observed while female guards tore off her clothes and left her naked. The authorities responded to Torres' complaint in this case by placing her in solitary confinement, prohibiting from calling her family and lawyer to denounce the abuses. She was further penalized for violating prison rules, and a secret letter was written to a judge assigned to her case giving a false version of the events. In the third case, female prison guards held her while a male guard inserted his fingers in her vagina and her anus during an alleged "search". The warden who ordered the search admitted later that he did not suspect Torres of having contraband, and that the search was in violation of prison rules.

Political prisoner

At the time of their arrest Torres and the others declared themselves to be combatants in an anti-colonial war against the United States to liberate Puerto Rico from U.S. domination and invoked prisoner of war status. They argued that the U.S. courts did not have jurisdiction to try them as criminals and petitioned for their cases to be handed over to an international court that would determine their status. The U.S. Government, however, did not recognize their request.^[7][11]

The sentences received by Torres and the other Nationalists were judged to be "out of proportion to the nationalists' offenses."^[4] Statistics showed their sentences were almost 20 times greater than sentences for similar offenses by the American population at large.^[11][15]

For many years, numerous national and international organizations criticized Torres' incarceration categorizing it as political imprisonment. ^[16][17] Alejandrina Torres was finally released from prison on September 10, 1999,^[18] after President Bill Clinton extended his clemency.^[19] Clinton cited Rev. Desmond Tutu and former President Jimmy Carter as having been influential on his decision to grant Matos the clemency offer.^[20][21] Cases involving the release of other Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners have also been categorized as cases of political prisoners, with some^{[22][23][24][25]} being more vocal than others.^[26][27][28]

In criticizing President Clinton's decision to release the Puerto Rican prisoners, the conservative U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee also categorized Matos as a "Puerto Rican Nationalist", echoing a recent Newsweek article.^[29] In 2006, the United Nations called for the release of the remaining Puerto Rican political prisoners in United States prisons.^[30]

The 10 convicted prisoners

The ten convicted on February 18, 1981, but then released under Clinton's clemency order were:

• Elizam Escobar, sentenced to 60 years in prison.
• Ricardo Jimenez, sentenced to 90 years in prison.
• Adolfo Matos, sentenced to 70 years in prison.
• Dylcia Noemi Pagan, sentenced to 55 years in prison.
• Alicia Rodriguez, sentenced to 55 years in prison.
• Ida Luz Rodriguez, sentenced to 75 years in prison.
• Luis Rosa, sentenced to 75 years in prison.
• Carmen Valentin, sentenced to 90 years in prison.
• Alberto Rodriguez, sentenced to 35 years in prison.
• Alejandrina Torres, sentenced to 35 years in prison.

In addition, Juan Enrique Segarra-Palmer, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison on October 4, 1985, was to become eligible for release in September 2004.^[4]

See also

	Puerto Rico portal
	Biography portal

• Carlos Alberto Torres
• Juan Enrique Segarra-Palmer
• Edwin Cortes
• Pedro Albizu Campos
• Oscar Collazo
• Lolita Lebrón
• Puerto Rican independence movement

References

External links

• United States v. Alejandrina Torres United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

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