An activist lawyer from Alamosa has settled a federal lawsuit that alleged he was illegally detained at traffic stops in New Mexico, Colorado and Illinois because his name appeared on an FBI terrorist watch list.
U.S. District Judge John Conway dismissed the case Tuesday. The lawsuit, filed in July 2006, was settled this year.
Francisco “Kiko” Martinez, 60, and his attorney, Daniel Yohalem, refused to discuss the settlement.
Martinez said that in incidents in 2000, 2004 and 2005, police held him without any probable cause or reasonable suspicion that he had committed a crime or was a terrorist.
He alleged that his constitutional rights were violated and that he was improperly added to a terrorist watch list because of crimes for which he was charged in 1973 but for which he was cleared in the 1980s.
Martinez, an activist in the Chicano movement, was accused of mailing three package bombs in Denver – to a police officer, a school board member and a motorcycle shop. None exploded. Martinez – who spent seven years as a fugitive in Mexico before trials cleared him – denied the charges.
