[Ppnews] Portugal Rejects Extradition of George Wright

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/nyregion/george-wright-fugitive-us-killer-avoids-extradition-from-portugal.html?hp 


March 1, 2012


Portugal Rejects Extradition of American Murderer




By 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/james_barron/index.html?inline=nyt-per>JAMES 
BARRON

After the United States missed a final appeals 
deadline, Portugal will not extradite the 
fugitive American murderer and hijacker who was 
seized last year near Lisbon, his Portuguese lawyer said on Thursday.

The United States had sought to have the 
fugitive, 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/george_wright_1943/index.html?inline=nyt-per>George 
Wright, returned to finish a 15-to-30-year murder 
sentence that he was serving when he escaped from 
prison in 1970, and to face charges for a 
hijacking two years later. 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/nyregion/george-wright-tells-story-of-hijacking-from-portugal.html>Mr. 
Wright has admitted commandeering a Delta 
Airlines DC-8 with several others and demanding a $1 million ransom.

Mr. Wright’s lawyer, Manuel Luis Ferreira, said 
on Thursday that Portuguese judicial officials 
had told him the case was effectively over. He 
said the United States had “exhausted every 
appeal here in the Portuguese system” after 
missing a deadline for taking the case to a constitutional court last week.

On Wednesday, a senior judge of that tribunal, 
Luis Maria Vaz das Neves, 
<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/02/29/world/europe/AP-Hijacker-Fugitive.html>told 
The Associated Press, “The case is now closed.” 
He said that for the United States to pursue the 
case further, it would have to find other grounds 
for having Mr. Wright sent back.

The Justice Department did not immediately 
respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Mr. Wright’s odyssey began in 1962, when he was 
convicted of murder in New Jersey. He was accused 
of taking part an armed robbery in which a gas 
station owner, a decorated 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/w/world_war_ii_/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>World 
War II veteran, was killed.

Mr. Wright escaped from a state prison in 1970, 
and in 1972, dressed as a priest, he and four 
others hijacked a flight from Detroit to Miami. 
They demanded that the plane be flown to Algeria. 
Along the way, he pulled a gun from a 
hollowed-out Bible he was carrying and held it to a flight attendant’s head.

The captain of Delta Flight 841 recalled last 
year that Mr. Wright had issued the ransom 
demand, saying, “If that money is not here by 2 
o’clock, I’m going to start throwing a dead body 
out the door every minute after 2 o’clock.”

Mr. Wright was arrested on Sept. 28 in Casas 
Novas, a village about 26 miles from Lisbon, 
where he had lived for more than 15 years under 
the name José Luís Jorge dos Santos. He was 
tracked down by a government task force set up to 
find fugitives from New York and New Jersey. 
Investigators had matched a fingerprint from Mr. 
Wright’s arrest on the 1962 murder charge to the 
fingerprint on the Portuguese identity card issued under the dos Santos name.

In November, a Portuguese court denied an 
American request to have him extradited.

Mr. Ferreira said on Thursday that Mr. Wright was 
“happy” at the outcome of the case.

“He is at peace with himself and the law,” he 
said. “He is thinking of writing a book or making 
a film. He wants to explain all his life.”





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