Biography
Alejandrina Torres was known as a community leader and educator associated with Puerto Rican community institutions in Chicago, including work connected to education and community health. Her activism is described as part of a broader Puerto Rican nationalist and independence tradition within diaspora communities.
She was arrested on June 29, 1983, after federal surveillance of an apartment described by investigators as a clandestine safe-house containing explosives, weapons, disguises, false identification, and ammunition. Torres was convicted of seditious conspiracy along with offenses involving explosives and firearms and received a 35-year sentence. She was released on September 10, 1999, as part of a conditional clemency process that required recipients to renounce the use or threatened use of violence.
Trial began August 1, 1985 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois under Judge George Leighton, with prosecutor Mr. Hartzler. Held pretrial in isolation at the Chicago Metropolitan Correctional Center from June 29, 1983 — placed alone in the men's unit with a curtainless shower, surveillance camera over the toilet, and male-guard strip-searches; she was hospitalized for chest pain (mitral valve prolapse and bundle-branch block) before being moved to the women's unit on July 11, 1984 after a staff-engineered confrontation. From 1986 she was held at the Lexington High Security Unit (HSU) — an underground sensory-deprivation chamber for women political prisoners built by the BOP, where she was subject to 24-hour surveillance, rectal and vaginal probes not used on other prisoners, and severe heart problems and limited use of her right arm developed under abusive treatment. The Lexington HSU was later closed by federal court order as illegally targeting prisoners for their political beliefs. Released September 10, 1999 by President Clinton's commutation.
