Biography
Lureida Torres was a twenty-six-year-old New York City schoolteacher and a member of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP), on the staff of the party's newspaper Claridad, when she was jailed in 1976 for refusing to cooperate with a federal grand jury. Imprisoned in New York on June 26, 1976 for civil contempt, Torres had declined to testify before a grand jury that was ostensibly investigating bombings by the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) — an inquiry the PSP and independence leader Juan Mari Bras denounced as a "fishing expedition" and "witch-hunt" against the Puerto Rican independence movement, noting that neither Torres nor the party had any connection to the FALN.
A federal judge rejected the argument that her continued jailing was purely punitive, and a national "Campaign to Free Lureida Torres" organized demonstrations and a petition drive directed at U.S. Attorney General Edward Levi. Torres, who said she would never testify, was released on October 28, 1976 after completing a four-month sentence.
