“Leonard Peltier” returns home after release

Native American activist Leonard Peltier, 80, convicted of killing two FBI agents and incarcerated for nearly five decades while maintaining his innocence, was released from a Florida prison and returned home to the Turtle Mountain band of the Chippewa tribe in North Dakota, after former President Joe Biden commuted his sentence the morning he left office earlier this year.

Acrowd said by organizers to be more than 1,000 gathered at the Sky Dance Event Center in Belcourt, North Dakota to welcome Peltier back into the community.

"I'm so proud of the showing and support you've given me. I've got a hard time keeping myself from crying." said Peltier after entering the room and being showered with gifts from tribal leaders. "This was worth it for me, to be able to sacrifice for you," he said.

Peltier's supporters while in prison ranged from tribal leaders to figures like the Dalai Lama and Robert Redford, who long pushed for his freedom, arguing he was falsely convicted in an unfair trial.

NDN Collective, who hosted the event in honor of Peltier, also helped advocate and orchestrate his release.

Peltier is now partially blind and in poor health, suffering from diabetes and heart trouble.

The commutation granted by Biden was long opposed by the FBI. Former agency Director Christopher Wray called Peltier a "remorseless killer."

His supporters say prosecutors withheld critical evidence that would have been favorable to Peltier and fabricated affidavits that painted him as guilty.

Peltier was among 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, part of a movement upholding Native American treaty rights with the U.S. government, has maintained he did not shoot Coler and Williams.