Free Hugo Pinell Now!

We print below a letter sent by the Partisan Defense Committee to the California Board of Parole Hearings on 24 December 2010. Hugo Pinell, a recipient of PDC stipends for class-war prisoners, has a parole hearing scheduled for January 11. We urge our readers to send letters demanding Pinell’s release to Robert Doyle, Chairman, California Board of Parole Hearings, P.O. Box 4036, Sacramento, CA 95812-4036.

The Partisan Defense Committee writes in support of the release of Hugo L.A. Pinell. Mr. Pinell has been turned down for parole numerous times despite many letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years. At one of these hearings, a commissioner berated Mr. Pinell saying “you continue to show no remorse…” This is a common ruse for denying parole for political prisoners. Mr. Pinell has no reason for “remorse” for his commendable political convictions.

This courageous political prisoner has now spent over 45 years in incarceration, 20 of them in the notoriously repressive Pelican Bay Special Housing Unit in Crescent City. There he is subjected to high-tech sensory deprivation: 23 to 24 hours a day in a small cell, no windows, no natural light, no contact visits and prolonged isolation. This cruel and unusual punishment must stop.

Mr. Pinell was well known to prison officials as an anti-racist leader of prison-rights organizing in the 1960s and ’70s. Along with five others, known as the San Quentin Six, Mr. Pinell was framed up on charges stemming from the protests that followed the assassination of George Jackson by prison guards in August 1971. The last of the San Quentin Six still in prison, Mr. Pinell remains incarcerated for one, and only one reason: he remains true to his vision of a society finally rid of racist oppression.

At his last hearing, the Board vindictively overstepped their bounds and illegally attempted to deny Mr. Pinell another parole hearing for fifteen years. We demand the abuse by the parole board cease and that Mr. Pinell be released immediately and unconditionally.