Sara Jane Olson Free!

We are happy to announce that Sara Jane Olson has been
released! Below is corporate media account about her
release. We wish he the best of luck!
LA ABCF


Ex-SLA member freed from Calif. prison

LOS ANGELES - After serving six years in prison for
trying to bomb police cars in the 1970s, former
Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson has
been released on parole and reunited with the family
she hid with for years.

Olson, 61, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, walked
out of the Central California Women's Facility in
Chowchilla on Monday, state Department of Corrections
spokesman Bill Sessa said.

In 2001, Olson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14
years in prison for attempting to bomb Los Angeles
police cars in 1975 with the SLA, the urban guerrilla
group best known for kidnapping newspaper heiress
Patricia Hearst. She vanished soon after she was
charged and reinvented herself as a Minnesota
housewife.

Olson later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in
the 1975 shooting death of a customer during a bank
robbery in Carmichael, near Sacramento. She was
serving a concurrent, six-year sentence in that case.

Sessa said Thursday that Olson earned time for good
behavior and "wasn't treated any differently than
anybody else." He declined to discuss terms of her
parole, citing security concerns.

Olson's attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, said she did
not know the terms of her client's parole but did not
think it would be a problem for Olson to eventually
return to Minnesota. Olson's family came to California
to be with her upon her release.

"Every time I've spoken with her, she just sounds
happy and relieved, and happy to be with her family,"
Holley said.

The SLA started in 1973 when no more than a dozen
white, college-educated children from middle-class
families adopted a seven-headed snake as their symbol
and an ex-convict as their leader. Their slogan:
"Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life
of the people."

Besides kidnapping Hearst, the group claimed
responsibility for the murder of a school
superintendent and was involved in an armed bank
robbery and other violent activities. Eventually those
activities caught up with the SLA members, including
Olson, who was charged in the attempted bombings.

Olson then went into hiding for nearly a quarter of a
century, changing her name, marrying a doctor and
becoming a mother of three in St. Paul, Minn. She was
arrested in 1999 after FBI agents acted on a tip from
TV's "America's Most Wanted."

After she was returned to Los Angeles for trial, Olson
pleaded guilty for her role in the attempted bombings.

Upon learning of her release, the union that
represents Los Angeles police officers issued a
statement expressing their disappointment.

"She needs to serve her full time in prison for these
crimes and does not deserve time-off for working in
prison," Los Angeles Police Protective League
President Tim Sands said in the statement.