A former NYPD detective injured in a bombing by the Armed Forces of National Liberation, a Puerto Rican nationalist group, is speaking out against President Obama's decision to commute the prison sentence of one of the group's leaders. NY1's Dean Meminger filed the following report.

Using violence to fight for Puerto's Rico's independence. That's what a group called the FALN did in the 1970s and early '80s, setting off bombs that killed four people and wounded dozens more in the city.. including NYPD officers. 

"I was blown back 15 feet. He was blown up in the air. We were both on fire," said retired NYPD Detective Anthony Senft.

Senft is outraged Oscar Lopez Rivera, an FALN leader, will be released from prison after President Obama commuted his sentence Tuesday.

The group was behind the infamuos 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan. It also took credit for series of explosions on New Years Eve 1982 that rocked Brooklyn federal court, Police Headquarters and Federal Plaza that injured three NYPD officers, among others.

Senft was one of them, losing sight in one eye in the Brooklyn blast.He says members of the FALN were terrorists, plain and simple.

"In the society that we live in today, we have to be very very aware of people who are interested in terrorizing our country. And we don't know what he is going to do," Senft said.

Activists and some politicians have been fighting for Lopez Rivera's freedom for years. 

He was convicted on weapons, explosives and conspiracy charges, but not with actually carrying out any attack.  

Melissa Mark-Viverito, the head of the city council, says she is overjoyed about Lopez Rivera's pending release.  

"I was very emotional. I cried," she said.

Mark-Viverito says the man she admires is not a terrorist.

"He is not accused of inflicting any harm, and he is not directly linked to any act of violence," she said. "He has clearly expressed he does not support violence."

"It was a disproportionate amount of time that he has served again, purely for his political beliefs," she added.

Michael Palladino, the head of the detectives' union, disagrees.

"It demonstrates a complete disregard for the injuries, lifelong injuries the detectives sustained," Palladino said.

Lopez Rivera has served 35 years of his 70-year sentence. He is expected to be released in May.