Oscar López Rivera (born January 6, 1943) is a Puerto Rican activist and militant who was a member and suspected leader[1] of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN), a clandestine paramilitary organization devoted to Puerto Rican independence that carried out more than 130 bomb attacks in the United States between 1974 and 1983.

In January 2017, President Barack Obama commuted López Rivera's sentence;[5] he was released in May 2017,[6] having served 36 years in prison, longer than any other member of the FALN.

[4] López Rivera was one of the founders of La Escuelita Puertorriqueña, now known as the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School and the Juan Antonio Corretjer Puerto Rican Cultural Center.

[9] López Rivera joined the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN), an organization which in the 1970s fought to make Puerto Rico an independent country.

The burglar led the Chicago police to an apartment, nearly devoid of furniture, but in which there were boxes containing explosives and bomb-making paraphernalia, weapons, clothing, wigs, and photographs of Chicago buildings, maps of the city, and several FALN documents, including a manual for guerrilla warfare detailing deceptive practices and rules of clandestine living titled Posición Política.

[16] On April 4, 1980, 11 FALN members, including Rodríguez and Beltrán Torres, were arrested trying to rob an armored truck in Evanston, Illinois.

[18] López Rivera was apprehended one year later on May 29, 1981, when, according to police, he ran a stop sign in Glenview, a Chicago suburb and provided a false Oregon driver's license.

[21] In August 1981, Alfredo Méndez, one of those arrested in Evanston who had become an informant, testified that López Rivera taught him how to make bomb detonation devices and gun silencers.

Speaking on his own behalf during closing arguments, López Rivera stated, "Puerto Rico will be a free and socialist country" and denounced Méndez as a traitor.

[22] U.S. District Judge Thomas R. McMillen sentenced López Rivera to 55 years in prison, calling him an "incorrigible law violator".

He asserted his belief in the legitimacy of political violence: "By international law, a colonized people has the right to fight against colonialism by any means necessary, including the use of force.

"[24] On August 20, 1986, a federal grand jury indicted López Rivera and several others for planning to engineer his escape, and that of another inmate, from Leavenworth.

[4] South African archbishop Desmond Tutu described the charges against López Rivera as "conspiring to free his people from the shackles of imperial injustice".

[40][41][42] On August 11, 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton offered clemency to López Rivera and 15 other convicted FALN members, subject to the condition of "renouncing the use or threatened use of violence for any purpose" in writing.

"[e] President Jimmy Carter had pardoned other Puerto Rican Nationalists on three occasions, including four who wounded members of Congress in an attack on the U.S. House of Representatives in 1954 and one who plotted to assassinate Harry Truman in 1950.

[48] Clinton had been urged to grant clemency by Coretta Scott King; several religious leaders, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Cardinal John J. O'Connor of the Archdiocese of New York, the Right Rev.

[47][f] On September 21, the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, Carlos Romero Barceló, supported Clinton's offer and denounced López Rivera for refusing to renounce violence.

[53] Some Republicans said it showed President Clinton was trying to build support in New York's Puerto Rican community for his wife's campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2000.

[52][56][57][58][59][64][65] López Rivera ultimately rejected the offer, allegedly because not all imprisoned FALN members had been pardoned[7][2][66] and because it would have required him to serve another 10 years in prison.

"[47][67] Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi said that López Rivera's "primary reason" was the fact that similar clemency had not been offered to Carlos Torres.

[69] On February 9, 2017,[70] he was released from the Terre Haute prison and moved to Puerto Rico to serve the last three months of his sentence under house arrest.

[76][77] On January 20, 2017, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Joe Connor, the son of one of the victims of the Fraunces Tavern bombing, condemning Obama's decision to commute López Rivera's sentence.