Biography
Barbara Curzi-Laaman was a member of the United Freedom Front and the partner of Jaan Karl Laaman. She was arrested in Cleveland, Ohio in November 1984, shortly after the Levasseurs were captured in Deerfield. She was convicted in 1986 in federal court in Brooklyn and sentenced to 15 years in federal prison. Barbara Curzi Laaman was part of the United Freedom Front underground network, which combined clandestine political messaging with bombings and robberies. Like other members of the group, she lived under false identities and moved through a network of safe houses while federal authorities investigated a series of attacks and related crimes.
Curzi Laaman was arrested on November 4, 1984, in Cleveland, Ohio, at the end of a long fugitive period. She was convicted in federal court for offenses tied to the United Freedom Front conspiracy and received a substantial prison sentence (reported as 15 years). She was later released during the 1990s.
Custody before the recorded sentencing admission
Prisons: Fortresses of Repression, PDF page(s) 6: The pamphlet names Barbara Curzi-Laaman among the five defendants in U.S. Marshals custody at a Brooklyn arraignment in 1985. This documents pre-sentence detention before the June 1986 admission currently recorded, but provides no initial day or intervening release/transition chronology. It is not used to create an uninterrupted interval or an additional duration. This is an attributed contemporary advocacy account; its allegations of abuse are not additional judicial findings. The archive filename contains “84,” but the pamphlet includes 1985-1986 events and should not be treated as a document fixed to 1984.
The Summer 1989 report says the government dropped the remaining sedition-trial charges against Curzi-Laaman on March 20 after the appellate court upheld suppression of evidence from her home. This concerns that later prosecution and does not erase her earlier Brooklyn conviction or establish physical release.
The Ohio Five’s March 25, 1985 statement reports placement in disciplinary cells upon arrival at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center on March 20.
