President Barack Obama's commuting of the 70-year prison sentence of former FALN leader Oscar Lopez Rivera was "horrific" — yet "it's no surprise," anti-terrorism activist Joseph Connor told Newsmax TV on Wednesday.
"It kind of tells you what we're dealing with, what we've been dealing with for the last eight years with this president," Connor told "The Steve Malzberg Show."
Connor's father, Frank, was among four people killed in a bombing at Fraunces Tavern in New York City in 1975 — and the Puerto Rican terrorist group claimed responsibility.
Rivera was among 10 FALN members eventually arrested and convicted on charges from various attacks — though not the 1975 bombing — and sent to prison in 1981.
Obama commuted Rivera's sentence, along with that of Chelsea Manning and many others Tuesday. He is now 74 and will go free in May.
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"People have asked why he let him loose — and I'm at that point where it's because he agrees with him," Connor told Malzberg. "There's no other explanation.
"The way I view this now it's more about the politics. It's more about the president than it is about the terrorist."
Connor noted Rivera refused clemency from President Bill Clinton in 1999 because he would have had to renounce the use of violence, as well as Rivera's disposition during a parole hearing in 2011.
"If he had shown contrition, if he had [offered] an apology, if he had been sincerely interested in any act like that, we would've recommended to the parole examiner to let him out," Connor said.
"But he didn't do it — and he wouldn't admit anything. He lied. He obfuscated.
"He said things like: 'Yeah, there were weapons and bombs found in my apartment. I don't know how they got there. I was in Vietnam. I shot thousands of rounds at people. I never hurt anybody. I couldn't believe what the American soldiers had done in Vietnam, and then I came back to the U.S.'"
"He did the exact same thing to the American people that he accused the soldiers of doing," Connor said. "He is a sworn terrorist."
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