CHICAGO – Supporters of a 74-year-old Puerto Rican nationalist freed from house arrest this week after decades in prison will honor him as he returns to his former hometown of Chicago.
Thursday events for Oscar Lopez Rivera include the dedication of a Chicago street-way named after the one-time leader in the Armed Forces of National Liberation, or FALN.
The Marxist-Leninist group claimed more than 100 bombings in the 1970s and 1980s, including in Chicago. Most didn't cause serious injuries, though there were deaths.
Those whose relatives died criticized then-President Barack Obama's decision to commute Lopez' sentence in February and they derided moves to cast Lopez as a hero.
But his supporters note he wasn't convicted of bombings but on sedition and other lesser charges. They long viewed him as a political prisoner.
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