TEARS FALL AS WIFE STARTS BID TO FREE HUSBAND

Amalia Richardson starts publicity campaign to bring home her husband, who
is serving time in U.S. prison for a drug conviction.

Fed up with inaction by officials, Amalia Richardson is launching an
Internet and bumper sticker campaign in a bid to set her husband Allen free
from a New York State maximum-security prison.

Richardson held a news conference Monday at the law offices of Bolton and
Muldoon in Vancouver to announce her strategy. She hopes to influence the
U.S. penal system, which she says sympathizes with her husband's plight,
but is unwilling to act.

"I just want to help," she said, her voice breaking with emotion. "Whether
it's from Canada, as a Canadian or from the authorities in New York. I
think it's wrong," she broke off, tears in her eyes.

Her "Free Allen Richardson Campaign" will use buttons, bumper stickers and
a Web site - www.freeallenrichardson.com.

The site is not up yet since the idea of a campaign only came to Richardson
as she flew home from New York on Saturday.

Allen Richardson turned himself in to American authorities in June and is
now serving eight months for a 1971 drug conviction. The New York State
parole board ruled he must serve the time for selling $20 worth of LSD to a
police officer when he was a 19-year-old college student in Rochester, N.Y.
Richardson, now 50, served three months of a four-year sentence almost 30
years ago and then fled to Canada. He had spent part of his sentence at the
infamous Attica State Prison where he was brutalized. Richardson changed
his identity and finally settled in Vancouver where he has been working at
UBCs' TRIUMF physics research laboratory since 1983.

At the news conference, Amalia Richardson said that although the parole
board ruled that he must stay in jail until March 2001, "I'd like to have
him back for Christmas."

She said a few more months in jail would be ample punishment. "It gets to
the point that you're breaking the butterfly on the wheel."

In November 1998 Canadian Immigration issued a warrant for his arrest and
deportation following a tip from an informant. Lawyers tried to arrange for
Allen Richardson to serve his sentence in Canada, but he is not a Canadian
citizen.

Canada Immigration has offered him a ministerial permit so that he can
return to Canada at the conclusion of his sentence.

Although the judge in New York did not grant a reduction in Allen
Richardson's sentence, he said that he would sentence him to probation if
he had to make such a decision today.

Allen Richardson is in his fifth week of solitary confinement in a
"reception" block in the maximum-security Downstate Facility near Fishkill,
about 64 km north of Manhattan on the Hudson River. He cannot have outdoor
exercise or access to reading materials.

He was supposed to have been moved to a medium security prison two weeks ago.

Amalia Richardson says she has found out that it may take another 10 days
before that happens.

Richardson's New York attorneys are trying to fast-track an appeal to the
parole board which could be heard in the next month.