IN CELEBRATION OF LEONARD WEINGLASS (1933-2011)
writing to add our voice to commemorate the contributions and show the example of my dear colleague and comrade in arms, the lawyer and U.S. human rights, Leonard Weinglass, who has just died at age 77 in New York. Until the last moment he devoted his energies to cases paradigm as the 5 Cuban antiterrorist fighters and victims of political persecution unjustly imprisoned for more than 10 years for "conspiracy to commit espionage." Submitted its final brief in defense of the 5 on 5 March, three weeks before his death.
The case of the 5 is representative of the depth of commitment to the causes Weinglass harder for justice "from the bowels" of the empire, since he assumed the defense of the "Chicago Eight" in 1968 (trial for "seditious conspiracy" of the main leaders of the anti-war and Black Panther accused of organizing a "mutiny" on the streets of Chicago in August of '68 for the Democratic party convention, shortly after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King); of Angela Davis in 1970 (academic and accused African-American activist for his alleged complicity in the attempted escape of George Jackson's prison, military leader of the Black Panthers), that of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo 1972 for his role in the leak (in a key antecedent of "Wikileaks") of the "Pentagon Papers" (documenting the scenes of U.S. genocidal aggression in the Vietnam war) - all successful cases resulted in the exoneration and release of their constituents, against the weight of the political machinery, judicial, and ideological in its anti-and a series of cases defending activists accused of involvement in armed movements in the United States, to the activist , journalist, and African-American prisoner of conscience Mumia Abu Jamal recently.
The remarkable and courageous participation Weinglass, teaming up with another great lawyers and human rights defenders of his generation, William Kunstler, both linked to the National Lawyers'Guild (U.S. equivalent of the National Front and National Association of Democratic Lawyers and as the Union of Jurists in Mexico, and how are you organizations, a subsidiary of the American Association of Jurists and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, IADL) in the case of "The Eight" in Chicago, was a turning point in his career , to radicalize its critique of the shortcomings of the judicial and political system in their country. He was also very close to cost him his career and a jail sentence for "disrespect" the trial judge, reversed itself was achieved in the appeals process with a public reprimand of Judge Julius Hoffman for his arbitrary handling of the case, resulting the exemption of Eight and Kunstler and Weinglass in a landmark decision. Similarly his defense of Ellsberg and Russo for the filtration of secret Pentagon documents not only ended his exoneration but a forceful statement of the Supreme Court against the Nixon administration and in favor of freedom of expression and the right to information, canceling the government's attempt to "prior restraint" to prohibit the publication of documents by the New York Times (and also setting a precedent that protects this and other media in the current context of leaks "Wikileaks"). Both cases-that of the Chicago Eight and the Ellsberg-contributed heavily to strengthen and legitimize the mass movement against the Vietnam War and its premises, and some similia has happened with his defense of Angela Davis, Mumia Abu Jamal, as successors of the movement for civil rights, and the 5 Fives, as an expression of solidarity between the potential American people and the Cuban people, among many other possible examples. Goodbye to the friend and advocate of democracy: a graduate course on Human Rights at the Autonomous University of Mexico City. José Enrique González Ruiz, Camilo Perez Bustillo, Clemencia Correa Eduardo Correa, Ruben Garcia Clark, Carlos Fazio, Oscar Gonzalez, Hassan Dalband.
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