Alejandrina Torres

Alejandrina Torres (born June 18, 1939) is a Puerto Rican, who was a member of the FALN who was convicted and sentenced to 35 years for seditious conspiracy. Torres was linked to the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), which claimed responsibility for 100 bombings and six deaths. Her sentence was commuted by President Bill Clinton in 1999.

Alejandrina Torres was born in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, in 1939. Her family emigrated to the United States when she was 11 years old. During the 1960s and 1970s, she was a leader in her community. She was a founding member and later a teacher at the Puerto Rican High School in Chicago. She later helped found Chicago's Betances Health Clinic and was active in boycotts of public schools which continued to mis-educate children and were hostile and racist towards their students' parents. At the First Congregational Church where she worked, she organized a variety of community programs. She also participated in the Committee to Free the Five Nationalists and later became a member of the Committee to Free the Puerto Rican Prisoners of War. At the time of her arrest in 1983 she was married to Reverend Jose A. Torres and had two daughters, Liza and Catalina, who were 16 and 11 years old respectively.

Torres was arrested in June 1983. The arrest in April 1980 of a dozen FALN members in Evanston led to the identification of Edwin Cortes as a suspect, this led to the identification of a FALN safe-house, and subsequently that it was also used by Alejandrina Torres. The surveillance team was able to place cameras and listening equipment in the apartment. In the apartment, they found approximately 24 pounds of dynamite, 24 blasting caps, weapons, disguises, false identification and thousands of rounds of ammunition. The agents were able to neutralize all the ammunition and explosives in the apartment, by replacing the gunpowder with coconut charcoal. Using surveillance, investigators determined that the group planned to place bombs at a military facility on July 4, 1983. This prompted the arrest on June 29, 1983 of three FALN members: Edwin Cortes, Alberto Rodriguez, and Alejandrina Torres, and a fourth sympathizer (Jose Rodriguez).

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