Leonard Peltier

Extradition

The circumstances under which Leonard Peltier was ultimately returned to the United States have long been controversial. The decision by Canadian authorities to extradite Peltier was based almost exclusively on the testimony of one witness, Myrtle Poor Bear, a woman who would later be declared too mentally unstable to testify at Peltier's trial. According to the FBI, "Poor Bear surfaced as a possible witness during the investigation. As a result, she gave three sworn affidavits. In the first affidavit she stated that she was not an eyewitness to the murders, but Peltier had told her he had committed the murders. In her second affidavit, she claimed she was an eyewitness and provided more detail concerning the incident. In the third affidavit, she provided still more detail."

Canadian authorities, however, were never told of the first affidavit, the FBI concedes.

Warren Allmand

Years later, Warren Allmand, then Canada's solicitor general and later the Canadian government's minister for Indian and Northern Affairs, wrote in a blistering statement that "Some time later I learned that the Myrtle Poor Bear statements in the affidavits were incorrect, that the FBI concealed other evidence, and that they carried on a concerted campaign to have Peltier convicted at any cost. It was at this time that I decided to join with others in raising this issue in the House of Commons. This was done on several occasions until 1997. I also attended conferences, did media interviews, and lobbied governments always condemning the wrongdoing at the extradition and the trial and requesting a new trial, parole, or clemency for Leonard Peltier."

The way Peltier's supporters see it, U.S. authorities did more than simply withhold evidence from the Canadian court to secure Peltier's return. They contend that the government actually manufactured Poor Bear's testimony. As Harbury put it, "Mr. Leonard Peltier was extradited from Canada on the basis of an affidavit signed by a Myrtle Poor Bear, a local Native American woman known to have serious mental problems. She claimed to have been Mr. Peltier's girlfriend at the time, and to have been present during the shootout, and to have witnessed the murders. In fact she did not know Mr. Peltier, nor was she present at the time of the shooting. She later confessed she had given the false statement after being pressured and terrorized by FBI agents."

Peltier and his supporters allege that the FBI's efforts to concoct evidence went further still. "It is undisputed," Bachrach writes in a 2003 memorandum on the case, "that the FBI kept several teenagers in motels and intimidated them into making false statements. The teenagers involved were indisputably intimidated by the FBI [and] provided false testimony against Mr. Peltier."