By DANICA COTO
Associated Press
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar Lopez Rivera unexpectedly returned to the island Thursday to serve the remainder of a sentence commuted by outgoing President Barack Obama, the San Juan mayor’s office said.
A mayoral official said Lopez disembarked from an American Airlines jet that landed in the capital, San Juan, just after 4:30 p.m. local time. He had been expected to be released from prison in Terre Haute, Indiana on May 17. Federal officials did not immediately respond to questions about the reason for his unexpectedly early release.
The official said Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz Soto accompanied Lopez on the flight. The official described Lopez’s arrival on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak with the press.
Lopez is expected to live in a halfway-house until his formal release date.
He had been sentenced to 55 years in prison for his role in a violent struggle for independence for the U.S. territory. Obama commuted that sentence last month.
Lopez was a member of the ultranationalist Armed Forces of National Liberation, which claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings at public and commercial buildings during the 1970s and ’80s in New York, Chicago, Washington and other U.S. cities. The group’s most notorious bombing killed four people and injured more than 60 at New York’s landmark Fraunces Tavern in 1975. Lopez was not convicted of any role in that attack, but some still hold him responsible because of his ties to the ultranationalist group.
Lopez’s friends had previously said he wanted to spend time with his daughter and granddaughter and establish a think tank that will work on such problems as climate change, the economy and the island’s political status.
Mayor Cruz recently said she would offer him a job as a community leader.
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