WIFE OF IMPRISONED TRIUMF RESEARCHER CAMPAIGNS FOR RELEASE

She says the New York penal system is sympathetic, but unresponsive.

Her husband is in solitary confinement, regularly strip-searched, and now
Amalia Richardson is fighting back.

"Having left this poor, thin, dejected man in this awful prison in New York
state, I just had to do something. I don't care how many cages I have to
rattle, I'm going to rattle them," an exhausted Richardson said from her
West Vancouver home Sunday.

Today, she'll hold a news conference announcing plans to fight a legal and
penal system that sympathizes with her husband's plight but is unwilling to
help him.

Although her husband, a 50-year-old former lab worker at the University of
B.C.'s TRIUMF Laboratory, was supposed to be transferred to a
medium-security prison after a brief assessment, he's now in his fifth week
in a high-security "reception block."

"He's locked up alone in a cell for 22 hours a day."

He is not allowed any reading material or outdoor exercise. When she saw
him, he had not been allowed to shower for almost a week.

He was strip-searched before and after every meeting with her at the
Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill, New York.

"He's very tense. He's very anxious to talk since he's spent so much time
alone."

On the way back to Vancouver after more than a month visiting her husband,
Richardson decided she had to get her message out to more people.

"It's a very human story and it's about justice and fairness. Chaining
myself to the railings in Ottawa is one thing, but if I can get news out on
the internet, then maybe something can be done.

"There will be 'Free Allen Richardson www.freeallen.ca' bumper stickers and
pins.

"I'm launching this campaign because I don't want this to fall off people's
radar screens and Allen just disappears."

At age 19, Allen Richardson, escaped from a New York state work camp after
serving a few months of a four-year sentence for selling LSD. He spent part
of that time in the notorious Attica prison.

He fled to Canada and went on to live a quiet life in Vancouver, completing
his education, and working under a new name.

He told Amalia about his conviction before they were married in 1995. But
she had already been treated for cancer and thought her risk of dying was
far more important than what he might have done in the sixties.

Their home included well-loved pets, a black Labrador named Luke and
Orlando their marmalade cat. Allen Richardson, a director and volunteer at
the West Vancouver SPCA shelter, has their photos -- along with Amalia's --
with him in jail.

Letters written by supporters also keep his spirits up.

That support has also been a help to Amalia Richardson as she celebrated
her 53rd birthday with a few friends -- and without her husband -- on the
weekend.

His absence isn't her only loss of late. Her mother died in England a few
weeks ago.

"I was sitting in Rochester court with Allen and she was dying. Then I had
to make the decision as to whether I went down to see Allen on the one day
they allowed me to see him and [also] try to see her.... By the time I got
to England the following morning, she had died."

Richardson's attorneys in New York are now focusing on his appeal before
the New York State Parole Board. "We have to exhaust that route first,"
says Richardson's lawyer in Vancouver, Michael Bolton.

The appeal could take up to four months but lawyers are trying to have the
process fast-tracked.

"This case cries out so poignantly for a just result," says Bolton.