Release Cuts Ties Forged With Supporters : Inmates: Nationalists imprisoned in California found friendships with sympathizers on the outside. Clemency means bittersweet goodbyes.

Every few weeks since 1995, Diane Fujino and her husband, Matef Harmachis, drove to the nearby federal prison to visit an inmate they had never known outside the penitentiary’s walls.

In the cramped and noisy visiting room at the Lompoc federal penitentiary, they sat across a small table from Adolfo Matos, one of the Puerto Rican nationalists imprisoned for conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government.

They listened to Matos’ stories of prison life and of his outside causes, offering solace to a man considered by some to be a political martyr and by others a ruthless terrorist.

But on Friday, they hurried to the prison to offer bittersweet goodbyes. The 48-year-old Matos, who had served 17 years of a 70-year sentence, was one of 11 inmates released in a controversial clemency deal with the Clinton administration.

After the endless waiting, Matos’ freedom came suddenly and without fanfare. The couple said word of the release time came just 90 minutes before Matos stepped outside the gloomy prison entrance around 11 a.m. Then he was whisked away for a flight to Puerto Rico.

“It was great to see him on the outside,” said Harmachis, a freelance journalist.

The Santa Barbara couple is part of a California support network that for years has offered companionship to five members of the radical group serving their sentences here. Along with Matos, four women belonging to FALN, the Spanish acronym for the Armed Forces of National Liberation, have been kept in the federal prison in Dublin, 30 miles east of San Francisco.

The guerrilla group, which opposes what members consider to be American occupation of their homeland, is responsible for more than 100 bombings in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s that killed six people. None of the imprisoned nationalists was convicted in the bombings, but they were found guilty of seditious conspiracy and weapon charges. All had to renounce violence as part of the deal.

Their supporters have offered their time and money for a number of reasons--from religious convictions to a nationalistic Puerto Rican spirit to a humanitarian desire to assist people they consider to be wrongfully imprisoned.

“We’re all educated people who believe in a political cause, said Oakland resident Denise Alvarado, who befriended Carmen Valentin, one of the women serving time at the Dublin prison. “We’re not prison groupies.”

For four years, the 47-year-old computer worker has divided her time between visits to Valentin and Matos. A Puerto Rican American, she became involved with the prisoners after hearing of the cause and decided to reach out.

“I’m really not a political person,” she said. “But in my mind I had this image of these people alone in cells needing a human touch that I could give.” So she wrote letters to all the prisoners and heard from all but one. She found Matos to be a delightful man with an easy sense of humor. Still, their visits depressed her.

“For so long, there was no touching, no holding hands--just one quick hug at arrival and departure,” she recalled. “We were far apart and it was noisy. I always left with a sore throat.”

Then a year ago, the Lompoc prison eased its visitation rules and the two friends were allowed to hold hands. “It meant so much to be with Adolfo and not have to talk,” Alvarado recalled. “We could hold hands and have moments of silence.”

As members of the Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience Project, Fujino and Harmachis began visiting Matos regularly. Despite his bleak surroundings, Matos invariably cheered the couple.

“Adolfo has given us far more than we could have ever given him,” says Fujino, an Asian American studies professor at UC Santa Barbara. “He’s taught us about dedication and commitment and living by your principles.”

Added Harmachis: “We went to make Adolfo feel better. But with each visit, it was he who made us feel better.”

Alvarado says her visits have resulted in a special closeness between Valentin and herself.

“She accepted me as a woman and as a friend and as a Puerto Rican,” she says. “I’m so sick of our image in America as thugs . . . . I’m proud to know a woman with the principles of Carmen Valentin.”

Alvarado, who is single, says she came to cherish her weekly visits with Valentin.

“We’re girlfriends; we make each other laugh,” she says. “We talk about men and clothes and politics and gossip. We talk about the news and the cute guards, about our hopes and dreams. We talk about our weight and our hair, about her grandson and my son and about my dog and my house--everything two women might talk about.”

For the dozens of people who regularly visited the prisoners, Friday’s release brings a distinct sense of loss.

“I feel like I’m losing my best friend because Carmen is going to be far away,” Alvarado said. “I’ve cried a lot since news of the clemency offer came. Our friendship will continue, but it will be different.

“But I’ve told Carmen how I feel. Friends can tell each other anything.”