1970s Radical Is Returned To Prison Days After Release

LOS ANGELES, March 22 -- Days after her release on parole, a former 1970s radical who had hidden as a fugitive for years was arrested Saturday and returned to prison to serve at least one more year. Corrections officials said a miscalculation resulted in her early release.

Criticism that followed Sara Jane Olson's release on Monday spurred a thorough review of her sentence and the timing of her parole, Chief Deputy Secretary Scott Kernan said at a news conference. Officials discovered a 2004 miscalculation that resulted in the former Symbionese Liberation Army member being released a year too early, he said.

He said the review was ordered "after many concerns raised in the media." The union that represents Los Angeles police officers and the son of a woman killed in a botched 1975 bank robbery near Sacramento opposed Olson's release.

Olson, 61, was detained at Los Angeles International Airport late Friday night and told that her right to leave the state had been rescinded. She was sent to stay with relatives in Palmdale, and was arrested on Saturday without incident, Kernan said.

She will be returned to the same prison that she walked out of on Monday and will not be eligible for release until March 17, 2009, Kernan said.

Olson's attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, called her return to custody "ridiculous."

"It's like they make up all new rules when it comes to her," Holley said. "It's like we are in some kind of fascist state."

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents more than 9,000 Los Angeles police officers, said it was relieved that Olson has been returned to prison, but was "far from satisfied."

"Parole shouldn't even be an option for terrorists who are convicted of murdering innocent bystanders and attempting to murder police officers," said the group's president, Tim Sands.

Kathleen Soliah was charged in 1975 with attempting to bomb police cars as an SLA member. But Soliah vanished soon after she was charged and reinvented herself as a housewife -- changing her name to Sara Jane Olson, marrying a doctor and becoming a mother of three in St. Paul, Minn. She was arrested in 1999 by FBI agents, acting on a tip from television's "America's Most Wanted."

In 2001, Olson pleaded guilty to the attempted bombings.