Medical Care for Leonard Peltier.

Leavenworth, Kansas 

Activists in support of Leonard Peltier say the Federal Bureau of Prisons is refusing to allow him to obtain badly needed oral surgery.

Peltier, a Lakota-Ojibwe Indian, is entering his twenty-fourth year at Leavenworth Prison. He is currently serving two consecutive life terms for the deaths of two FBI agents on June 26, 1975, during a confrontation on the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota. His supporters claim that there is no clear evidence linking Peltier to those crimes, and that Peltier is a political prisoner who is being punished for his membership in the American Indian Movement.

He has received support from a wide range of people, including Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, the late Mother Teresa, and Amnesty International, according to the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.

A new campaign in support of clemency for Peltier is also gaining steam. On February 11, the European Parliament passed a resolution asking President Bill Clinton to grant Peltier clemency.

Peltier, who contracted lockjaw as a child, cannot chew properly and hasn't received any special meals in prison, according to the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee's web site. In 1996, he was transferred to a federal medical facility in Springfield, Missouri, near Leavenworth. There, two unsuccessful surgeries worsened his jaw condition. According to the Defense Committee's web site, the second operation almost killed Peltier, who was in a coma for fourteen hours.

After the second operation, Tom Collins, a prison medic, recommended that Peltier be treated elsewhere. In his opinion, Springfield did not have adequate facilities for this kind of operation, he said.

In April 1997, maxillary specialist Eugene Keller of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, offered to provide a second opinion. He also said that if an operation were necessary, he would perform it free of charge,

The Federal Bureau of Prisons took two years to respond to Keller's offer. A query from Paul Wellstone, the Democratic Senator from Minnesota, elicited a May 28, 1999, letter from Phillip S. Wise, the assistant director of the health services division in the Bureau. "Dr. Keller is not a Bureau physician, and he is not under contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to provide health care services," wrote Wise.

Activists argue that it is not unheard of for prisoners to have complicated medical procedures performed outside the prison.

The refusal to grant Peltier medical services has brought renewed attention to his case. Activists are demanding that he get the care he needs and that he be released, as Amnesty International has said. "We're asking that people call President Clinton's office at the White House in November and leave a message asking for clemency," says Gina Chala, an activist with the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.

For more information, contact Gina Chala, the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, P.O. Box 583, Lawrence, KS 66044. Or call [phone]. Also check out the group's web site at: http:// members.xoom.com/freepeltier/in alex.html.