Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the Broadway hit Hamilton, took to twitter on Tuesday to celebrate Barack Obama’s commutation of Oscar Lopez Rivera’s prison sentence.
Miranda cheered: “Sobbing with gratitude here in London. OSCAR LOPEZ RIVERA IS COMING HOME. THANK YOU, @POTUS...I wish I was with every [Puerto Rican] in Chicago RIGHT NOOWWWWW.”
However, Rivera’s release deserves anything but celebration. Prior to his commutation, the National Review’s Ronald Kolb reported on the “unrepentant” terrorist.
“Lopez-Rivera has been in federal prison since 1981, after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy and arms trafficking in connection with his leadership of the FALN, the notorious left-wing terrorist group that perpetrated more than 130 attacks on U.S. soil from the mid 1970s through the mid 1980s, killing six and wounding many more. Most members of the FALN, which purported to fight for Puerto Rican independence but maintained deep ties to Fidel Castro’s Cuba, were long ago captured and imprisoned, and many of them have already served their time and been released.
But Lopez-Rivera remains unrepentant about his crimes, and he’s hardly been a model prisoner: In one of two failed attempts to escape, he conspired with others inside and outside his prison to kill his way to freedom, attempting to procure grenades, rifles, plastic explosives, bulletproof vests, blasting caps, and armor-piercing bullets. After the FBI thwarted this plan, another 15 years was added to Lopez’s original 55-year sentence.”
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Kolb added that Rivera has remained defiant: “In a January 2011 hearing at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., the families of FALN victims showed up seeking any sign that Lopez-Rivera was sorry for his group’s actions, but none was forthcoming. The parole examiner ruled that Lopez-Rivera would remain in prison until at least 2023....Efforts to keep Lopez-Rivera incarcerated continue, spearheaded by victims’ families and retired law-enforcement officers. For them, his release would be an injustice and an affront to the memories of those who were killed and those who were left behind by the FALN. He founded the group and trained those who carried out its attacks, and he has never shown remorse for the horror, death, and pain those attacks caused.”
The following is the relevant excerpt from Entertainment Weekly’s January 17 write-up of Miranda’s tweets:
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s break from playing Alexander Hamilton will be over soon.
The creator and former star of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton tweeted Tuesday he would return for one night in Chicago’s production to celebrate the release of Oscar López Rivera, a Puerto Rican nationalist whose 70-year prison sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama on Tuesday.
“Sobbing with gratitude here in London. OSCAR LOPEZ RIVERA IS COMING HOME. THANK YOU, @POTUS,” Miranda, who is of Puerto Rican descent, tweeted. “I wish I was with every [Puerto Rican] in Chicago RIGHT NOOWWWWW.”
“Y @MMViverito, when you talk to Don Oscar, díle I’ve got a show for him in Chicago. It’ll be my honor to play Hamilton the night he goes,” Miranda added.
Rivera moved to the United States as a child, several years later landing in Chicago with his sister, and drafted to serve in the Vietnam War when he was 18. After his return, he eventually became a leader of the pro-Puerto Rican independence group FALN, which was responsible for over 100 bombings in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1981, Rivera was sentenced to 55 years in prison for seditious conspiracy to overthrow the United States government, with 15 years added in after a failed escape attempt in 1988.
