Marchers carry a large painting of jailed Leonard Peltier during a march on the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth, Mass., November 22, 2001
INDIGENOUS activist Leonard Peltier will return home, nearly half a century after he was imprisoned for the 1975 killings of two FBI agents.
President Joe Biden commuted Mr Peltier’s sentence Monday, hours before leaving office.
It follows decades of community-led advocacy calling his imprisonment an example of the United States government’s mistreatment of Native Americans.
The White House said Mr Peltier, who is now 80 and of declining health, will transition to home confinement.
The National Congress of American Indians celebrated the “historic” decision in a statement, saying the case “has long symbolised the systemic injustices faced by Indigenous Peoples.”
The president commuted Mr Peltier over the objection of former FBI director Christopher Wray.
In a private letter sent to Mr Biden earlier this month, Mr Wray accused Mr Peltier of being a “remorseless killer,” and urged the president not to act.
Mr Peltier was active in the American Indian Movement.
The movement grabbed headlines in 1973 when it took over the village of Wounded Knee on Pine Ridge — the Oglala Lakota Nation’s reservation in South Dakota — leading to a 71-day stand-off with federal agents.
Outgoing Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet member, posted on X that the commutation “signifies a measure of justice that has long evaded so many Native Americans for so many decades.”
