100+ Groups Urge Biden To Pardon Human Rights Lawyer Steven Donziger

More than 100 environmental and human rights groups sent a letter Tuesday to U.S. president Joe Biden urging him to pardon American attorney Steven Donziger.

Donziger is under house arrest for refusing to hand over privileged client information in a high-profile environmental case.

In the letter, the groups decry the prosecution of Donziger, who has been jailed at home and in a federal prison since 2019.

They claim it is retaliation for his work defending the rights of indigenous peoples in Ecuador “who were victims of chevron corporation’s oil dumping.”

Donziger represented tens of thousands of ecuadorian farmers and indigenous people in a class-action lawsuit against chevron resulting in a multibillion-dollar judgment.

Chevron’s subsidiary Texaco dumped more than 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into rivers and pits in the Amazon rainforest, according to the lawsuit.