TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/050189/05018900.031

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 5KB | 94 lines

NATION, Page 42

Bringing Them Back to Justice

Extradition can be a breeze -- or a byzantine business


    The arm of American law is sometimes longer than many
lawbreakers imagine, and last week it reached around the world to
seize two very different suspects. At the request of the U.S.,
Swiss authorities went to the posh Schweizerhof Hotel in Bern and
arrested Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi millionaire and arms dealer
implicated in the Iran-contra scandal. Khashoggi is wanted in New
York City on racketeering charges stemming from real estate
dealings involving former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.

    A day later, Mexican police nabbed Ramon Salcido, 28, a winery
worker accused of a gruesome shooting and slashing rampage in
Sonoma County, Calif., two weeks ago that left seven people dead
and terrorized residents. Among the victims were Salcido's wife and
two daughters, ages 4 and 1. A third daughter, 3, barely survived
a throat slitting. Suspecting that Salcido might flee to his native
country, U.S. officials alerted Mexican authorities, who caught him
at a railroad station near Los Mochis.

    The arrests triggered the legal machinery for returning the
suspects to the U.S. for trial. Most extraditions involving
criminal suspects are relatively simple, and Salcido's case turned
out to be exceedingly so. Even before proceedings started, Salcido
asked to return to the U.S., and he was whisked back on a plane
lent to authorities by Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz. But not
all extraditions are that uncomplicated. For well-financed and
influential fugitives like Khashoggi, who have access to top legal
talent, the process can drag out for months. Soon after Khashoggi's
arrest, his U.S. lawyer landed in Bern, and his Swiss attorney
announced, "We intend to look at all the legal angles open to us."

    At a time of easy and relatively inexpensive international
travel, extradition has become a common procedure. American
officials are involved in more than 1,000 cases around the world,
either seeking the return of suspects to the U.S. or responding to
the requests of other nations. The U.S., for example, is expected
to deport Hector Burgueno Fragoso to Mexico. He was found last week
in Tucson, and is a prime suspect in the drug-related torture and
slaying of twelve people just across the border. The extradition
process is usually governed by individual treaties between
countries, each with its own special provisions. The U.S. alone has
signed agreements with more than 100 nations, though not with some
key countries like the U.S.S.R. or Iran. Suspected drug lord Pablo
Escobar Gaviria remains in Colombia because that country has yet
to properly ratify its treaty with the U.S.

    The thorniest extradition disputes involve international
terrorism. The "political-offense exemption," a centuries-old
human-rights provision of international law, excludes political
agitators and dissidents from extradition. This standard, though,
can be twisted, and suspects considered terrorists by one nation
may be freedom fighters to another. Complicating matters further
are the threats and bribes that sometimes engulf the cases.

    In 1988 Mexico refused to turn over to the U.S. William
Morales, a Puerto Rican nationalist convicted of illegally
transporting explosives. Mexico called Morales a "political fighter
for the independence of Puerto Rico" and let him flee to Cuba. The
year before, West German officials refused to give up Mohammed Ali
Hammadi, who was wanted for the execution of U.S. Navy diver Robert
Stethem during a 1985 TWA hijacking. Bonn haled him instead into
its own juvenile courts (Hammadi claims he was 16 at the time).

    The U.S. Government itself has on occasion declined to
extradite some suspected terrorists. In 1981 it refused to hand
over Desmond Mackin, an I.R.A. member, to Britain, and it is now
reviewing the case of I.R.A. fighter Joseph Doherty, an escapee
from a Belfast prison.

    The U.S. is currently involved in a case that it hopes will
change attitudes. Last week the Greek Supreme Court heard a U.S.
application for the extradition of Mohammed Rashid, a suspected
Palestinian guerrilla. Rashid has been charged with planting a bomb
on a Pan Am flight from Tokyo to Honolulu in 1982 that killed one
passenger and wounded 15. American officials are hoping that the
Rashid case can be a first. Says one: "We hope that terrorists will
start running out of places to go."

    Precedent, though, is not encouraging. Last year the Greek
Justice Minister overruled a court decision favoring an Italian
extradition request for Palestinian Abdel Osama Al-Zomar, wanted
for a bloody attack on a Rome synagogue that killed a two-year-old
boy and wounded 34 people. The Minister decreed that Al-Zomar's
actions fell "within the domain of the struggle to regain the
independence of his homeland." Such frustrating episodes may
explain why U.S. authorities occasionally resort to more
subterranean alternatives to extradition. In 1987 Lebanese plane
hijacker Fawaz Younis was lured out of Cyprus by U.S. agents posing
as narcotics traffickers. They persuaded him to discuss a drug deal
on the yacht Skunk Kilo as it plied international waters. Once
aboard, the agents handcuffed Younis and promptly shipped him back
to the U.S. Last month he was convicted in Washington.