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Saturday Morning News

Accused Terrorist Maintains Innocence

Aired February 24, 2001 - 7:20 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: A California judge has refused to limit evidence in the trial of Sara Jane Olson. She's accused of being a former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, when she was known as Kathleen Sullia (ph), and of eluding authorities for 25 years.

CNN's Ann McDermott brings us up to date.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANN MCDERMOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Authorities say that back in the days when Sara Jane Olson was known as Kathleen Sullia, she planted a couple of bombs under Los Angeles police cars, bombs that failed to go off. That, authorities say, was one of her last acts as a member of the radical '70s group, the SLA, a group perhaps best known for the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst and a series of bank robberies.

Now, for the first time since her arrest after more than two decades as a fugitive, years in which Olson changed her name and made a middle-class life for herself, she says she's not guilty.

SARA JANE OLSON: I was not in Los Angeles, I did not place those bombs under those cars. I was not in Carmichael Bank in Sacramento.

MCDERMOTT: Her attorney, Tony Serra, was no less passionate.

TONY SERRA, OLSON'S ATTORNEY: We are representing an innocent client.

MCDERMOTT: But in a hearing just minutes earlier, a prosecutor presented a very different picture of Sara Jane Olson.

MICHAEL LATIN, PROSECUTOR: We're introducing evidence of her involvement in a series of events that demonstrate great violence, a hardened heart...

MCDERMOTT: And in as blow to the defense, the judge said the prosecution could introduce evidence about the SLA, including evidence of SLA crimes which Olson apparently was not involved.

Attorney Serra said if that happens, the defense doesn't stand a chance. But later he vowed to fight on, as did Olson. OLSON: This isn't a story, this isn't me telling my own side, this is a case in which they're trying to take away my freedom forever.

MCDERMOTT: The trial is scheduled to begin in early April.

Ann McDermott, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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