TY - BOOK AU - MacKay, Carolyn Joyce PY - 1999 DA - 1999// TI - A Grammar of Misantla Totanac PB - University of Utah Press CY - Salt Lake City ID - MacKay-1999 ER.
Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), also called United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a small group of multiracial militant revolutionaries based in during the 1970s that owes nearly all its notoriety to the kidnapping and subsequent indoctrination of, the newspaper heiress. Founded in the, California-area in 1973 by Donald DeFreeze, known to the group as General Field Marshal Cinque Mtume, the group lived much of its short life in the media spotlight, making the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) one of the more infamous revolutionary groups of the era, though one of the least respected politically.
Facts Matter. Support the truth and unlock all of Britannica’s content.With Hearst as Tania, the SLA robbed a branch of the Hibernia Bank on April 15, 1974, where Hearst’s transformation to a revolutionary was captured by the surveillance camera. The group then fled to southern California.
On May 16, Hearst and Bill and Emily Harris, known then as Teko and Yolanda, attempted to rob a sporting goods store in, California. The following day, police blasted some 5,000 rounds into the SLA’s South Central-Los Angeles hideout, which then went up in flames.
Six SLA members—DeFreeze, Angela Atwood, Nancy Ling Perry, Willie Wolfe, Patricia Soltysik, and Camilla Hall—were killed. Hearst and the Harrises watched the events on television from a motel room in, California. The remaining SLA members robbed two more banks—one in, on February 25, 1975, and another in Carmichael, California, on April 21, 1975.
Myrna Lee Opsahl, a bank customer, was shot and killed in the latter robbery; Emily Harris subsequently admitted to having fired the shot that killed Opsahl. That September, in, Hearst, the Harrises, and two minor SLA members were captured. All were tried, convicted, and served prison sentences for their SLA-related activities.
Upon release, they all returned to relatively mainstream lives.Kathleen Soliah, also known as Sara Jane Olson, had joined the SLA after the police shoot-out in. She remained a fugitive until she was apprehended in 1999, when she was charged with planting bombs under police cars in 1975.
In January 2002, Soliah was sentenced for the bomb charges; in November that year, she and three other SLA members—Bill Harris, Emily Harris, Michael Bortin—pled guilty to second-degree murder in the Opsahl case. SLA-member James Kilgore was also charged with second-degree murder but was still a fugitive at that time; he was arrested soon after.
After serving sentences ranging from six to eight years, the SLA members were eventually released on, except for Joseph Remiro, who was sentenced to life in prison for Foster’s murder.