(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - At a ceremony on Monday in Montevideo where the winner was announced, the human rights group called Peltier the longest-serving political prisoner in the Americas, AFP reported.
Peltier, a Native American activist who was a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in its heyday, was convicted in 1977 for the alleged murder of two US FBI agents during a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
He was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment.
"Leonard Peltier, who on September 12, 2011 will turn 67, has spent more than half his life in prison. He is a symbol of resistance to repressive state policies by the United States, where there are people in jail for ethnic, racial, ideological and religious reasons," a foundation statement said.
Ricardo Elena, a member of the foundation's honorary board, said Peltier's case "is one that is repeated over and over: violation (of rights), persecution, eviction, invasion and expropriation of the indigenous people from the time it was 'discovered' until now.
"It did not just happen in the United States; it is happening in southern South America with the (indigenous) Mapuche people, and with indigenous people in North America," he stated.
Elena continued with his excoriation of the United States, saying it "likes to think it is the seat of democracy, but it has political prisoners just like a dictatorship might have."
The Mario Benedetti Foundation was established to support human rights and cultural causes in synch with the work of the Uruguayan writer who it was named for, who died in 2009.
Peltier is incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
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