WASHINGTON– US President Donald Trump said Friday he was considering granting a posthumous pardon to boxing great Muhammad Ali, whose refusal of military service during the Vietnam War made him a champion of the US civil rights and anti-war movements.
Ali, who died in 2016, was convicted of draft evasion in 1967 and sentenced to five years in prison, but the conviction was overturned on appeal by the US Supreme Court in 1971.
“I’m thinking about Muhammad Ali. I’m thinking about that seriously. And some others and some folks who have sentences that aren’t fair,” Trump told reporters at the White House before heading to Canada for the G7 summit.
Trump described Ali as “not very popular” at the time of his refusal to serve in the military during the Vietnam War.
But while controversial, Ali’s resistance on grounds of conscience made him a hero to many during a highly polarized period marked by struggles over racial inequality and rising opposition to the US role in the Vietnam War.
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