Last Wednesday, 24-year-old Portland self-described anarchist and political activist Leah-Lynn Plante was released from prison after serving a week of her 18-month sentence for refusing to testify against others in front of a secret federal grand jury; however, her two roommates remain incarcerated.
Now freed political dissident Leah-Lynn Plante
Plante and her house mates were served summons via a “paramilitary” FBI and Joint Task Force raid allegedly seeking to identify protesters who may have been involved in the havoc wreaked earlier this year during the May Day riots in Seattle.
The raid was conducted as all occupants of the house slept. She described it in a post on her blog site:
“FBI agents from around Washington and Oregon and Joint Terrorism Task Force agents from Washington busted down the front door of my house with a battering ram, handcuffed my house mates and me at gunpoint, and held us hostage in our backyard while they read us a search warrant and ransacked our home. They said it was in connection to May Day vandalism that occurred in Seattle, Washington earlier this year.
“However, we suspected that this was not really about broken windows. As if they had taken pointers from Orwell’s 1984, they took books, artwork and other various literature as ‘evidence’ as well as many other personal belongings even though they seemed to know that nobody there was even in Seattle on May Day. While we know that knowledge is powerful, we suspected that nobody used rolled up copies of the Stumptown Wobbly to commit property damage.
“We saw this for what it was. They are trying to investigate anarchists and persecute them for their beliefs. This is a fishing expedition. This is a witch hunt. Since then, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, we have learned that this Grand jury was convened on March 2nd, 2012, two months before the May Day vandalism even took place.”
Indeed, Seattlepi.com recently confirmed Leah’s information that the FBI was interested in several suspects prior to the May Day riots, even going so far as to follow some from Portland to Seattle and also obtaining phone and text records supposedly linking them to the violence.
“As the investigation into the May Day riot continues, recently unsealed court documents show the FBI’s interest in several suspects predated the political vandalism that swept downtown Seattle,” the Seattle PI report states.
Since then, all three have been involved in lengthy, but highly-secretive, legal battles. Not surprisingly, the “indefinite detention” of these citizens, for what amounted to little more than possessing “anarchist literature,” has received virtually no mainstream media attention.
While Plante has been released, her room mates Katherine Olejnik and Matthew Duran remain behind bars, as they also refused to testify.
Writer J.G. Vibes described the “legal loophole” which basically waived the defendants’ Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, allowing the grand jury to incarcerate the political dissidents:
“The sneaky legal trick that the prosecutors pulled was granting her immunity, which meant that anything she said to them would not incriminate her. This may sound OK at face value, but when you are granted immunity you lose your right to remain silent and can be thrown into prison for what is called “civil contempt.” This actually happens a lot; video journalist Josh Wolf, for example, served seven-and-a-half months in 2006 and 2007 for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury and turn over his footage of a protest in San Francisco. Grand jury trials are very shady ordeals, which have totally different rules than the typical court case. Defense attorneys are not even allowed to be present, and the proceedings of the case are completely secret.”
Vibes further posits that all three have alibis, and weren’t even in Seattle during the riots.
Last month, at Plante’s second grand jury hearing, she informed the court she was aware her arrest was a thinly-veiled, political ploy. “I believe that these hearings are politically motivated…The government wants to use them to collect information that it can use in a campaign of repression. I refuse to have any part of it, I will never answer their questions, I will never speak.”
Plante’s house mate Katherine “KteeO” Olejnik was incarcerated on September 28 for the same crime, and their third house mate, Matthew Duran, was jailed a few days before her, RT.com reported.
According to RT, Duran’s lawyers have confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, “denied contact with his lawyer, denied visitor requests forms, personal dietary requirements and sunlight and fresh air.”
As Infowars has reported in the past, riots are often instigated by agent provocateurs, undercover cops dressed as dissidents inserted into protest groups to provoke violence and justify police state riot crackdown measures.
“Alex Jones’ film Police State 2: The Takeover” exposed how the black bloc anarchists were completely infiltrated and provocateured by the authorities during the violent 1999 WTO protests in Seattle,” Paul Watson wrote in 2009.
In the video clip to the left of the 2009 protest at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, three poorly disguised undercover police officers are spotted posing as anarchist protesters.
In the clip, a genuine protestor states one of the three officers broke the flash on his camera, and by the end of the clip, all genuine protestors are aware that the awkward group of three are in fact police.
In addition, a 2011 report conducted by Mother Jones and the University of California-Berkeley revealed that the FBI “regularly infiltrates communities where they suspect terrorist-minded individuals to be engaging with others.”
According to RT, “Regardless of their intentions, agents are sent in to converse within the community, find suspects that could potentially carry out “lone wolf” attacks and then, more or less, encourage them to do so. By providing weaponry, funds and a plan, FBI-directed agents will encourage otherwise-unwilling participants to plot out terrorist attacks, only to bust them before any events fully materialize.”
As recent as last week, a Bangladeshi man with “overseas connections to al-Qaida” was entrapped by the FBI after they supplied him a car loaded with 1,000 pounds of “inert explosives” which he allegedly tried to detonate. According to CBS News, information of Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis’s arrest came as a shock to his family back home in Bangladesh, who say, “he could not have committed the alleged crimes.”
Here is the statement Olejnik released before being incarcerated:
“For me choosing to resist a grand jury is about humanity – I cannot and will not say something that could greatly harm a person’s life, and providing information that could lead to long term incarceration would be doing that.
“For me choosing to resist a grand jury is about freedom of speech and association – I cannot and will not be a party to a McCarthyist policy that is asking individuals to condemn each other based on political beliefs.
“The reasons above are why I am choosing to not comply. I apologize to those in my life on whom my incarceration is going to be a burden, and I thank you for understanding my decision.
“For those unaware the folks being subpoenaed are being incarcerated for refusing to answer questions about others’ political beliefs.”
As Katherine “Kteeo” Olejnik and Matthew Kyle Duran still remain incarcerated, it’s essential to call attention to their cases.
You can show your support for KteeO by sending her books from her wishlist or mailing her letters to:
View Matt’s book wishlist and send him books or letters to:
Matthew Kyle Duran #42565-086 FDC SeaTac P.O. Box 13900 Seattle, WA 98198
Spread the word.
As witnessed in both Brandon Raub’s and Leah-Lynn Plante’s situations, the mainstream media consciously chooses to ignore political prisoners and their illegal detentions. It is up to us to give more exposure to these heinous acts, to uphold liberty and to stave off the encroaching police state.
Poster Comment:
Take a look at these youngsters and compare them to the jack-booted thugs sent out to save us from ourselves. WHO DO YOU SUPPORT ???
"Mr. Prime Minister, there is only one important question facing us, and that is the question whether the white race will survive." -- Leonid Brezhnev to James Callahan
"Mr. Prime Minister, there is only one important question facing us, and that is the question whether the white race will survive." -- Leonid Brezhnev to James Callahan
