Biography
American Indian Movement (AIM) activist framed with Paul Skyhorse in the 1974 killing of cab driver George Aird at the Camp 13 AIM camp in the hills north of Los Angeles. Held nearly four years awaiting trial before both defendants were acquitted in 1978, in a case widely seen as part of COINTELPRO-style targeting of AIM. Documented in PFOC Breakthrough magazine.
Movement reporting during the pretrial years (Revolutionary Cause, March 1977) reported that Mohawk could no longer straighten one arm after a beating in which he was chained to the bars for days with his arms cuffed up behind his back, and that both men were held in solitary in separate prisons, forcibly drugged, and "subdued" — beaten, choked and dragged out — in court when they tried to speak for themselves.
Amnesty International monitored the case throughout: Chilean lawyer Dr. Eugenio Velasco observed the trial on the organization's behalf, and in July and October 1977 Amnesty wrote to Governor Jerry Brown, Senators Cranston and Hayakawa, and the Los Angeles County Jail warden over allegations that the two prisoners were denied adequate medical treatment and ill-treated in the Ventura and Los Angeles county jails (Amnesty International Report 1978).
