Bringing Them Back to Justice

By Alain L. Sanders

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.

With reporting by Robert Kroon/Geneva and Dennis Wyss/San Francisco, with other bureaus