Alicia Rodríguez (FALN)

In criticizing President Clinton's decision to release the Puerto Rican prisoners, the conservative U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee also categorized Rodriguez as a "Puerto Rican Nationalist", echoing a recent Newsweek article. In 2006, the United Nations called for the release of the remaining Puerto Rican political prisoners in United States prisons.

For many years, numerous national and international organizations criticized Rodriguez' incarceration categorizing it as political imprisonment. Alicia Rodriguez was finally released from prison on September 10, 1999, after President Bill Clinton extended her clemency. Clinton cited Rev. Desmond Tutu and former President Jimmy Carter as having been influential on his decision to grant Rodriguez the clemency offer. Cases involving the release of other Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners have also been categorized as cases of political prisoners, with some being more vocal than others.

Alicia Rodríguez (born 1953, Chicago) is a Puerto Rican member of the FALN who received a sentence of 55 years for seditious conspiracy and other charges. She was sentenced on February 18, 1981, and incarcerated in a U.S. federal prison. However, she was released early from prison, after President Bill Clinton extended a clemency offer to her on September 7, 1999.

Rodríguez was arrested in 1980, convicted of seditious conspiracy and related charges, and sentenced to 55 years in prison. Her sister is Ida Luz Rodriguez. Although Rodriguez was one of the longest-held prisoners in the prison, with an immaculate record which included the accumulation of a bachelor's degree with honors, after 13 years she was still not permitted to walk unescorted across the grounds.

Rodríguez and 11 others were arrested on April 4, 1980, in Evanston, Illinois. They had been linked to more than 100 bombings or attempted bombings since 1974 in their attempt to achieve independence for Puerto Rico. At their trial proceedings, all of the arrested declared their status as prisoners of war, and refused to participate in the proceedings.

Rodríguez was born in Chicago in 1953, the first in her family to be born in the United States. She recalled not speaking the language and teachers not knowing how to work with children who, for some reason, did not speak English. A teacher sat her in the back of the classroom and paid little attention to her or her learning needs.