By Andrew Hay
(Reuters) - Native American activist Leonard Peltier said spending the rest of his life in home confinement after being granted clemency by former President Joe Biden is "as good as freedom," after Biden's own FBI director opposed commutation for a man sentenced to life for the killing of two FBI agents.
Biden, on his last day in office on Monday, commuted the sentence imposed on the 80-year-old Peltier. President Donald Trump later in the day pardoned around 1,500 of his supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol four years ago.
A member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa, Peltier has diabetes and heart trouble and will be allowed to live under home confinement after his release from a Florida federal detention center on Feb. 18.
His supporters say prosecutors withheld critical evidence that would have been favorable to Peltier and fabricated affidavits that painted him as guilty.
Indigenous and human rights groups, a former prosecutor and judge involved in the case, and figures ranging from Pope Francis to actor Robert Redford had called for Peltier to be freed.
"It'll be just as good as freedom, even if I have to stay in the house," Peltier said on Monday in a phone conversation from prison with a member of the NDN Collective Indigenous rights group. The group posted a recording on social media.
DECISION CALLED COWARDLY
The commutation was opposed by Biden's FBI Director Christopher Wray and former FBI agents who, in a statement, said the decision was "cowardly and lacks accountability." Wray in June opposed parole for Peltier, calling him a "remorseless killer" who should never be freed.
But Biden's former Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the United States' first Native American cabinet secretary, posted on Instagram that Peltier's release signified justice that has evaded other Native Americans.
Cherokee Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin said in a statement that Biden's "historic decision reflects a critical step toward reconciliation, not only for Mr. Peltier, but for Native communities that have long fought for recognition, sovereign rights and dignity."
Peltier, a member of the rights group American Indian Movement, was part of a group of Native American men who traded gunfire with FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in June 1975.
The agents, who had gone to the reservation in search of a fugitive, were killed, along with one of the Native American activists. Peltier has maintained he did not shoot Coler and Williams.
In 1976, two other men were found not guilty in the deaths of the FBI agents on self-defense grounds.
Peltier fled to Canada before the trial. He was eventually extradited back to the United States and tried separately in 1977. He was found guilty and given two life sentences. He was denied parole in July.