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Symbionese Liberation Army Case Study

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The Symbionese Liberation Army, active only between 1973 – 1975, were an American self-styled left-wing revolutionary group that considered themselves to be acting on behalf of the working class. The group are mainly famous for the kidnapping of publishing heiress, Patricia “Patty” Hearst in 1974, but they also committed bank robberies, two murders and other acts of violence. The S.L.A. grew out of a black inmate organisation, the Black Cultural Association, active in California’s Vacaville Prison. Coordinated by a University of California-Berkeley professor, the group bought white students to the prison to tutor prisoners in political science, black sociology, and African heritage. Begun as an inmate self-help group, over time the BCA became …show more content…

She took part in a bank raid and denounced her parents. At her trial, it was alleged that she was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, a psychologic condition where the hostage exhibits apparent loyalty to the abductor(s). She was sentenced to seven years in prison but served just 21 months. She was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001. In May 1974, the L.A.P.D. found S.L.A. members in an apartment in Compton. A televised gun battle ensued. Police eventually set the house on fire with gas canisters and all 6 SLA members were killed; Donald DeFreeze, Willie Wolfe, Camilla Hall, Patricia Soltysik, Angela Attwood and Nancy Ling Perry. Then in June 1974, The Harris’s, with Hearst either as a prisoner or a partner, relaunched the S.L.A., with the help of Kathleen Soliah and her siblings, Josephine and Steven, and James Kilgore, Michael Bortin and Wendy Yoshimura. During a bank robbery in April 1975 at the Crocker National Bank in California carried out by the S.L.A., a bank customer Myrna Lee Opsahl was shot and killed. In September 1975, Hearst, Bill and Emily Harris were arrested in San Francisco. Bill and Emily Harris served eight years in prison for the kidnapping of

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