But Who Is Oscar Lopez Rivera?

As part of a White House announcement of sentence commutations and pardons, President Barack Obama has commuted the federal sentence of Oscar López Rivera, a Puerto Rican nationalist who has been in jail since 1981 for seditious conspiracy. According to the White House, López Rivera’s sentence has been “commuted to expire on May 17, 2017.” López Rivera was a member of Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), a militant group that fought for Puerto Rican independence.