Why Cats Play Patty Cake

Movement Grand Jury under Attack

Puerto Rican Independence Movement under Attack in New York and San Juan by Jan Susler

MR ZINE January 2008

"It appears to us to be a reinitiation of the harassment of independentists."1 -- U.S. Congressman José Serrano, speaking to FBI director Robert Mueller An unexpected knock on the door . . . men in trench coats handing you a grand jury subpoena . . . . If you're involved in the movement for the independence of Puerto Rico, this isn't just a not-so-fond memory of the COINTELPRO era. It's 2008 in New York City, and you are Christopher Torres, a young social worker; Tania Frontera, a young graphic designer; or Julio Pabón Jr., a young filmmaker from the Bronx. Their subpoenas have aroused vigorous support for them, not just in New York, but in cities across the U.S. and in Puerto Rico. On the island, over forty organizations united to condemn this latest wave of repression and convened a demonstration on January 11 where over a thousand people participated under the theme "In the Face of Repression, Unity and Struggle," with placards and banners calling for the FBI and the federal courts to leave the island. Simultaneous activities took place in Brooklyn, Hartford, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Orlando, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and Cleveland. As resolutions condemning the repression emanated from the National Lawyers Guild New York City Chapter, the American Association of Jurists, the Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience Project, and the Latin America Solidarity Coalition, the New York English language daily El Diario/La Prensa published an editorial ringing the alarm bell, and U.S. congressman José Serrano telephoned FBI director Mueller to voice his concern. Why the subpoenas? Why now? And why the resounding, unified denunciations? Dating back to the era of English colonial control over Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican people have organized to wrest their sovereignty from foreign domination. That resistance continued after the U.S. invasion and occupation in 1898. When the colonizers repressed and criminalized public organizing for independence, clandestine organizations formed, including the Popular Boricua Army -- Macheteros in the 1980s. In 1985, the FBI arrested and almost killed its leader, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, accusing him of participation in the 1983 expropriation of $7.5 million U.S. government insured dollars from a Wells Fargo depot in Hartford, Connecticut. After his release on bail, Ojeda returned to clandestine existence. In spite of the FBI's ever-increasing reward for information leading to his capture, he remained underground for some fifteen years. On September 23, 2005, however, a squad of FBI assassins circled his home, shot him, and left him to bleed to death.2 The assassination outraged the entire nation, and the FBI became a pariah. Hoping to distract public attention from their own criminal conduct and justify their presence on the island, particularly in the post-911 era, the FBI soon went on the offensive. On February 10, 2006, allegedly in a continuing investigation of the Macheteros, they raided the homes and businesses of several independence activists and in the process pepper-sprayed the nation's journalists who were covering the FBI's paramilitary incursions. Again, the entire country expressed its outrage. Since then, activists have been stopped, searched, and harassed, with the homes and offices of many others, including attorneys and movement leaders, mysteriously broken into in events reminiscent of the infamous black-bag COINTELPRO jobs: computers, digital cameras, and cell phones are taken, while other valuable items remain untouched. Recent rumors are that the head of the FBI in San Juan, Luis Fraticelli, is close to the end of his tenure and has given instructions to accelerate efforts to neutralize the remains of the clandestine group.3

For Fernando Martín, a leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, the FBI "wants to clean up its image after the assassination of Filiberto (Ojeda Ríos), because they want to be able to say that in Puerto Rico, they investigate people of all parties (and) somehow salvage their image after their selective attacks."4

Julio Muriente, a leader of the National Hostos Independence Movement, stated, "The legal facade of this repressive operation is directed against the Macheteros, but the real intention is against the entire independentist movement, including against the people of Puerto Rico," calling it "an attack which is not against any particular organization, but against a political, social, patriotic movement, and against a people."5 U.S. Congressman José Serrano (D-NY), who was instrumental in getting the FBI to disclose thousands of pages of records documenting its illegal surveillance of and intervention in the independence movement6, said of these subpoenas, "It certainly appears to be a fishing expedition,"7 which, he noted, harkens back to the days when, according to FBI director Freeh, the agency engaged in "egregious illegal action, maybe criminal action."8

The subpoenas, initially returnable on January 11, were continued to February 1. Attorneys announced they would file motions to quash the subpoenas. Frontera's attorney, Martin Stolar, noted that "if the motion is denied, Tania will have to appear before the grand jury, and may decide not to testify, invoking her constitutional rights."9
Organizations in Puerto Rico have announced they will protest in various towns of the island on February 1 in defense and support of the three young people subpoenaed, with the themes "Wake Up, Boricua, Defend Your Own!" and "the Grand Jury Is illegal!" Additional protests are being planned in U.S. cities as well.
The consequences of not collaborating with the grand jury are well known to those who support independence. Norberto Cintrón Fiallo, whose home was searched during the February 10, 2006 FBI incursion, and who participated in the January 11 protest in San Juan, refused to collaborate with various grand juries investigating the independence movement in both Puerto Rico and New York in 1981 and 1982 and served close to three years in prison as a result.110 Julio Rosado, who participated in the January 11 protest in New York, resisted grand juries investigating the Puerto Rican independence movement, serving nine months for civil contempt in 1977, and later much of his three year sentence for criminal contempt. "They have always been there, whenever they want to intimidate," he said, adding that he is convinced there will be more subpoenas to come.111
A New York daily English language newspaper expressed editorial concern over the political witch hunt, in words which should give us all pause:
Because of laws initiated by the Bush Administration and passed by our Congress, the legal protections that would give political dissidents a right to due process have been eroded. The net is wide for casting someone with "suspicious" political beliefs, without having been charged, tried or convicted of a crime, as a threat. [ . . . ] Because the attacks on civil liberties and human rights and the historical intimidation and repression of Puerto Rican independence supporters are interrelated, activists must make those links.
That's all the more urgent considering the silence of most elected leaders and the virtual media blackout on the subpoenas. In the context of secret prisons, torture, detention without trial, and warrantless wiretapping, the FBI's fishing should be a concern for anyone interested in rescuing this country from a rising police state.112

1 José Delgado, "Habla con el jefe del FBI," El Nuevo Día, January 9, 2008.
2 In the white papers designed to avoid criminal liability, the government blamed some of the errors in the operation on Luis Fraticelli, the Puerto Rican special agent in charge of its San Juan field office. Not coincidentally, Fraticelli had also participated in the 1985 near assassination of Ojeda Ríos. See: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, "A Review of the September 2005 Shooting Incident Involving the Federal Bureau of Investigations and Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, "August 2006, available at www.usdoj.gov / oig / special / index.htm.
3 José Delgado," The case of New York, "El Nuevo Día, January 14, 2008.
4 Combined Services, "denunciation of persecution of independentists: Fernando Martín criticize the newspaper El Nuevo Dia for articles published December 23," El Nuevo Día, January 4, 2008.
5 AP, "I renounce independence of grand jury subpoenas," El Vocero, January 7, 2008.
6 The Disclosed Are Being Classified documents at Center for Puerto Rican Studies of the City University of New York at Hunter College. See: www.pr-secretfiles.net/.
7 José Delgado, "Talk to FBI Chief: José Serrano expressed to Robert Mueller discomfort between Puerto Ricans in New York by the citation of three people, "El Nuevo Día, January 9, 2008.
8 Matthew There Brown," Puerto Rico Files Show FBI's Zeal; For Decades, Secret U.S. Dossiers Targeted Suspected, "Orlando Sentinel, November 06, 2003.
9 Ruth E. Hernández Beltrán / Agencia EFE," postponed summons to independence from New York, "Primera Hora, January 11, 2008.
10 José" Che "Paralitici , Imposed Sentence: 100 Years of Imprisonment for the Independence of Puerto Rico, Ediciones Puerto Historical (San Juan, Puerto Rico: 2004), pp. 339-341.
11 Ruth E. Hernández Beltrán / Agency EFE, "Posponen citación a independentistas de Nueva York," Primera Hora, January 11, 2008, http://www.primerahora.com/XStatic/primerahora/template/nota.aspx?n=146663. Rosado was one of five supporters of independence so imprisoned. Ricardo Romero, Steven Guerra, María Cueto, who are Mexican, and Rosado's brother Andres, simultaneously served time for criminal contempt of the same grand jury. See: United States v. Rosado et al., 728 F.2d 89 (2nd Cir. 1984).
12 "Constructing an Enemy," Editorial, El Diario/La Prensa, January 17, 2008.


Jan Susler is a partner with the People's Law Office in Chicago, which she joined in 1982 after a six year stint at Prison Legal Aid, the legal clinic at Southern Illinois University's School of Law. Her long history of work on behalf of political prisoners and prisoners' rights includes litigation, advocacy, and educational work around USP Marion and the Women's High Security Unit at Lexington, KY. Her practice at PLO focuses in addition on police misconduct civil rights litigation. For several years she was an adjunct professor of criminal justice at Northeastern Illinois University and has also taught at the University of Puerto Rico. Representing the Puerto Rican political prisoners for over two decades, she served as lead counsel in the efforts culminating in the 1999 presidential commutation of their sentences. She continues to represent those who remain imprisoned.

Does Jeff Hardy Have His Belly

Puerto Rican Activists and Artists

Pro-independence Puerto Ricans subpoenaed by NYC grand jury
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 12, 2008

NEW YORK: The case of three young Puerto Rican activists and artists ordered to appear before a Brooklyn federal grand jury has stirred up protests around the country and provoked outrage among supporters of the movement to grant independence to the U.S. territory.

Attorneys for two of the activists Christopher Torres and Tania Frontera said they had successfully filed motions to postpone their clients' Friday court dates. Supporters said that a third, Julio Pabon Jr., also received a postponement.

Hundreds of people demonstrated Friday in front of the Brooklyn courthouse in protest of the subpoenas. Rallies also took place Thursday in Puerto Rico and other U.S. cities.
"We don't know why this investigation is taking place," said Ana Lopez, a professor of Caribbean history at Hostos Community College in the Bronx who helped organize the rally in New York. "All we know is that its purpose is to harass and intimidate hard-working Puerto Rican people."
Federal grand jury investigations are secret by law. Officials with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of New York said they had no comment. None of the three Puerto Ricans have been charged in any crime.

Supporters of the three speculated that the FBI had expanded a probe that began in Puerto Rico that they said was aimed at harassing the legal movement to obtain independence for the U.S. territory.

In February 2006, FBI agents searched homes and a business to thwart what the agency at the time said was a "domestic terrorist attack" planned by the violent separatist People's Boricua Army, also known as the Macheteros, or "cane cutters."

The group was responsible for bombings and attacks in the 1970s and 1980s and had claimed responsibility for a 1979 attack in which gunmen killed two U.S. sailors.

In 2005, the group's leader, Filiberto Ojeda Rios, who was wanted for the 1983 robbery of an armored truck depot in Connecticut, was killed during a shootout with FBI agents when they came to arrest him at a farmhouse on the island.

Federal investigators later said the FBI agents were justified in killing Ojeda because he opened fire first. Frontera's attorney, Martin Stolar, said it appears the "government is investigating what remains of the Macheteros" after Ojeda's death.

He said his client, a Manhattan graphic designer, has no connection to any organization. "But she's definitely been a lifelong supporter of independence," he said. Frontera was a member of a local group opposed to the military bombing of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques by the U.S. Navy during the 1990s, her supporters said. Her father is also a leading member of the Puerto Rican Independence Party. Stolar said such political activities were "very much aboveground." He questioned the federal government's probe. "We see it as a targeting of aboveground individuals and organizations and associations and conflating that with someone who is involved with the Macheteros," Stolar said.

Attorneys for Torres, a social worker and community activist, and Pabon, a Bronx filmmaker and graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, declined to comment.
Pabon's father, Julio Pabon Sr., said he was at his sports memorabilia shop in the Bronx a few days before Christmas when agents who identified themselves as members of the FBI/NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force showed up asking for "Julio Pabon." The elder Pabon, a lifelong pro-independence activist, instinctively thought they were looking for him.
"We want the younger one," he said the agents told him, adding that they only wanted to talk to his son.

The elder Pabon was astonished, he said. "I have been an activist all my life," he said. "My son is not involved." But he said his 27-year-old son was definitely pro-independence like his parents and, while at the university, had organized a group of fellow students from Wesleyan to travel to the U.S. naval base in Groton, Connecticut, to protest the bombing of Vieques. Pabon said he and his son knew the other two who had been subpoenaed as well.

Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917 but they cannot vote for president and have no voting representation in Congress. The island was seized by the U.S. at the end of the English-American War.

Stream South Parksubtitles

Making an enemy

January 17, 2008 publisher of El Diario La Prensa, New York

The three Puerto Rican subpoena to appear before a grand jury is an alarm signal not only for Puerto Rican independence movement. The subpoenas were issued to a social worker, a graphic designer and a filmmaker supposedly in connection with an FBI investigation into the Macheteros. FBI Director Robert Mueller supposedly knew about the subpoenas, according to Rep. Jose Serrano. The FBI returns to the attack on a group of young people independence living in New York. On 20 December 2007, the FBI handed the summons to the men appeared before a grand jury on January 11, 2008 day commemorating the birth of Eugenio Maria de Hostos.

is not new that the FBI choose as target anyone who defends the independence of Puerto Rico. The previous agency surveillance are detailed in 1.8 million pages, some of which were released in 2000. Then-FBI director Louis Freeh acknowledged that the agency had done illegal known actions, possible crimes against Puerto Ricans. Even the first elected governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín, was labeled subversive. Another casualty decline. Due to laws made by the Bush administration and approved by our Congress, the legal protections that would give them political dissidents a right to due process have been corroded. The network is extensive to include as a threat to anyone with political beliefs "suspects" without charges, trial or conviction of a crime. Organizations like the Center for Constitutional Rights has been challenging the police state mentality that has become normal and legal here. Since the attacks on civil and human rights and the historical intimidation and suppression of independence are related, activists have to make these links. This is all the more urgent given the silence of most elected leaders and virtual censorship that the media have made the citations. In the context of secret prisons, torture, detention without trial and without judicial permission recordings, fishing FBI should worry anyone interested in rescuing this country from a growing police state.

Background Music For Taekwondo FBI returns to the attack on young ... The FBI returns to the attack against a group of young Puerto Ricans

On the eve and during the day more than a thousand

Puerto Ricans moved in solidarity with young people and repudiate the grand jury illegal.

In a grand jury of citizens can not be accompanied by his lawyer, the process is directed by a prosecutor if the witnesses refuse to answer questions can be imprisoned for civil contempt if they never committed any crime. The grand jury is a political tool used to persecute citizens. The grand jury does not comply with due process law, is anti-democratic and illegal.

The three young men cited are Tania Frontera, born and raised in Puerto Rico. He is 35 years old graphic artist from Minneapolis University graduate and has an MBA from New York University. Currently one of his works exhibited in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Puerto Rico. stands out in people's struggle in defense of Vieques. Christopher Torres, born and raised in New York and has 31 years. He graduated from Hunter College in NY and is working social. Worked on projects such as the LIFE-AIDS and is currently working with an agency that rescues children and adolescents with family problems. Puerto Rico has visited once during a march for peace in Vieques.

Julio Pabon was born and raised in New York and has 27 years of age. He graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Is a filmmaker and cultural activist in the South Bronx. As a student was a student leader of the Latino community at their university. His family has been dedicated to highlight the values \u200b\u200bof Puerto Ricans in New York athletes.

Young cited the grand jury are respected professionals in your community, advocates of Puerto Rican and have strong support from their families and neighbors.

You can join the campaign "Despierta Boricua: defend yours."

Write letters, send emails, call radio programs, paint a mural, celebrating an ecumenical solidarity, protest and denounce the abuses of the FBI against citizens who struggle for the decolonization of Puerto Rico. On Friday February 1, the Grand Jury quote on pain of contempt of youth independence.

The Puerto Rican people rejects the use grand jury to intimidate, restrict freedom and to pursue the independence movement.

For over 70 years the FBI in Puerto Rico has been unable to fight drug trafficking, violence and arms trafficking in Puerto Rico. Since this federal agency was established on the island use the grand jury to prosecute and imprison Mr. Pedro Albizu Campos. In the decade of 1960, the FBI encouraged the division of the independence movement in 1970 and protected the murderers of Arnaldo Dario Rosado young, Carlos Soto Arrivi, Santiago Mari Pesquera, Carlos Muñiz Varela and FBI recently Filiberto murderer Ojeda Rios, head Boricua Popular Army General - Macheteros (EPB-M). Despierta Boricua

defend your family! Grand Jury

illegal!