LA JUNTA — A man pulled off an Amtrak train after passengers reported hearing him talk about al-Qaeda and make threatening statements is well known among prison-rights advocates. He spent more than 20 years in solitary confinement.
Ojore Nuru Lutalo, 64, of Elizabeth, N.J., was arrested Tuesday at the La Junta train station and faces a felony charge of endangering public transportation. He was free on $30,000 bond and faces another hearing Friday in Otero County District Court.
Lutalo, a self-described anarchist, told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that he was returning to New Jersey after a Los Angeles book fair sponsored by the Anarchist Black Cross Federation when passengers apparently overheard his cellphone conversation.
“I was talking to people about what transpired at the book fair,” Lutalo said, quickly adding: “I never made a threat or a reference to Amtrak, period, so I’m waiting for court so I can challenge my accuser.”
Lutalo was released from a New Jersey prison in August after serving 28 years for armed robbery and weapons offenses involving a shootout with a police officer in 1975 and another shootout with a drug dealer in 1981. He served more than 20 years of that sentence confined in a cell alone for 23 hours a day because the anarchist material he was reading was deemed a security threat, according his New Jersey attorney, Bruce Afran.
Lutalo said he had washed his clothes and covered himself with his robe when he laid down to sleep in a coach car on the train headed to Chicago. The Associated Press
