Peace activist sues Minneapolis for police violence, withholding evidence

Who is "Karen Sullivan"? Apparently, she was an informant police used to arrest people during the Republican National Convention in 2008.

Law enforcement agencies failed to reveal the presence of an undercover FBI infiltrator during the discovery process of protester Mick Kelly's 2008 RNC lawsuit, and now an attorney for Kelly is asking for the case to be re-opened in order to find out who "Karen Sullivan" really is.

Kelly alleges a Minneapolis police officer shot him in the abdomen at close range with a rubber bullet. He says, "This is an attempt to have a legal pushback" against those who "would silence the anti-war movement."

At a press conference on March 4, 2011, Minneapolis attorney Ted Dooley spoke about the lawsuit, filed on the grounds that rubber bullets are not supposed to be used above the waist, nor at close range. He will ask the judge presiding over the case to reopen the discovery process and will move to subpoena "Karen Sullivan."

This past September, the FBI raided Kelly's home and the homes of several others in Minnesota's peace movement. Tracy Molm was one of those other FBI targets:

"Today is a great day as we are going to send them a subpoena as they have done to us, and we deserve the truth. We deserve for them (the FBI) to tell us what they've been doing and we have every right to know and I believe that we need to stand up and say so and this is one method that we're going to do that."

The existence of an undercover law enforcement officer who was active for two years in RNC protest organizations was first revealed in the course of communications between lawyers representing activists whose homes were raided by the FBI September 24, 2010 and Chicago Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox. The infiltrator, who went by the name "Karen Sullivan," remained active in the Twin Cites peace movement until the September 24 raids, when she vanished.

At the press conference, Kelly was supported by several other targets of the September 24, 2010 raids and the great grandson of one of the targets.