Tre Arrow says Oregon halfway house next stop -AP

by The Associated Press

Thursday June 04, 2009, 12:44 PM

Tre Arrow, also known as Michael J. Scarpitti, rappels from a third-story ledge outside the U.S. Forest Service's Northwest regional headquarters in downtown Portland on July 17, 2000. Tre Arrow says on his Web site that he is due to be released Monday from a federal prison and will return to a Portland half-way house.

One of the last environmental activists convicted of arson as a protest tactic across the West says he is being released from federal prison to a halfway house in Oregon.

Tre Arrow says on his Web site that he is due to be released Monday from a federal prison in California to serve the remaining six months of his term at a halfway house in Portland.

Tre Arrow

The 35-year-old environmental activist was sentenced last year to 78 months in prison after pleading guilty to setting fire to cement and logging trucks in the Portland area in 2001.

But Arrow was given credit for about four years of time served in jails awaiting extradition from Canada to Oregon after his arrest in British Columbia in 2004.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons lists his release date as Dec. 4 from the Herlong medium security prison near Susanville, Calif.

An agency spokeswoman says the bureau does not confirm whether an inmate was sent to a halfway house until after the inmate arrives.

The prosecutor in the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Peifer, said Thursday that release to a halfway house near the end of a sentence is typical for many federal inmates.

But Peifer said federal supervised release is very strict, requiring Arrow to find a job and avoid any association with groups such as the Earth Liberation Front or the Animal Liberation Front.

About a dozen other activists are serving various federal prison terms for their involvement in a series of arson fires across the West from 1996 to 2001, including a ski resort blaze in Vail, Colo. Many were linked to one or both groups.

At his sentencing last August, Arrow told U.S. District Judge James Redden that he accepted responsibility for his actions but never considered himself a threat or danger to the public.

He also said he had not changed his views about protecting the environment and that prison time was unlikely to make him feel any differently.

On his Web site, Arrow refers to himself as a political prisoner and criticizes the government for various policies, including a lack of tough corporate regulation and sentencing a large number of nonviolent offenders to prison.

Arrow legally changed his name from Michael Scarpitti after talking to trees that he said somehow communicated with him.

-- The Associated Press

source - http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/tre_arrow_says_oregon_halfway.html