Symbionese Liberation Army

rdf:langString Symbionese Liberation Army

rdf:langString Symbionese Liberation Army

rdf:langString California, United States

rdf:langString Flag/banner of the Symbionese Liberation Army

rdf:langString San Francisco and Los Angeles

rdf:langString , William Harris, alias "General Teko"

rdf:langString Donald DeFreeze, alias "General Field Marshal Cinque"

rdf:langString No more than 22

rdf:langString Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army

rdf:langString The United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was a small, American far-left organization active between 1973 and 1975; it claimed to be a vanguard movement. The FBI and American law enforcement considered the SLA to be the first terrorist organization to rise from the American left. Six members died in a May 1974 shootout with police in Los Angeles. The three remaining fugitives recruited a few new members, but nearly all of them were apprehended in 1975 and prosecuted. The pursuit and prosecution of SLA members lasted until 2003, when former member Sara Jane Olson, another fugitive, was convicted and sentenced for second-degree murder during the SLA 1975 bank robbery in Carmichael, California. During its active years from 1973 to 1975, the group murdered at least two people, committed armed bank robberies, and attempted bombings, among other violent crimes. Its spokesman was escaped convict Donald DeFreeze, but Patricia Soltysik and Nancy Ling Perry, young, middle-class women, were believed to share the leadership. The SLA's first notorious act was the assassination of Marcus Foster, the black Superintendent of Oakland Public Schools, and wounding of his deputy Robert Blackburn in November 1973. The SLA had misunderstood issues in Oakland, and this murder alienated leftists and many in the black community, who admired Foster for his work. In January 1974 two members, Russell Little and Joseph Remiro were arrested and charged with the murder. They were convicted in 1975 and sentenced to life in prison. Little was later retried on appeal, acquitted, and released. In February 1974 the SLA became internationally known for kidnapping heiress Patty Hearst, then a student at the University of California, Berkeley. About two months later Hearst released taped messages announcing that she had joined the SLA. In April 1974 the SLA committed armed robbery of a bank in San Francisco. They split up after that. In May 1974 six founding members died at a house in Los Angeles, the result of a shootout with the LAPD and a fire at the house. Emily and William Harris, a married couple who were founding members, remained at large as fugitives with Hearst. Claiming to lead the SLA, they later picked up a few more members and committed more crimes, including the 1975 armed robbery of a bank in Carmichael, California, in which a customer was killed. Most were apprehended in 1975 and brought to trial; most accepted plea deals and served several years in prison. As of 2017, all but one of the surviving SLA members have been released from prison. Joe Remiro remains incarcerated. Little said that Soltysik, Perry, and DeFreeze were the ones who shot Foster and Blackburn. They died in the 1974 shootout in Los Angeles.