Health of U.S. fugitive cited

The wife of captured American fugitive George Wright said Friday that her husband has multiple health problems that require treatment and that he should not be extradited to the United States to serve the rest of his time on a murder conviction after 41 years on the lam.

In an interview at the couple's home in Almocageme, Portugal, Maria do Rosario Valente said Wright has glaucoma and "very, very high" blood pressure caused by recent stress, and has complained of chest pains.

"We're having a bunch of tests done to see what's his current health condition," Valente said.

Wright "regrets the choices he has made," she said. "If he could, he probably would have made different choices."

Wright, tall and slim with his head shaved bald, did not participate in the interview because of Portuguese legal restrictions that prevent him from talking about the case. After it was over, he kissed her and made small talk about matters unrelated to his legal battle.

Manuel Luis Ferreira, Wright's lawyer, said he would include his client's health problems in legal arguments aimed at preventing him from being sent to the United States to serve the rest of a 15- to 30-year sentence for the 1962 killing of a worker at a gas station in Monmouth County, N.J.

"I didn't initially realize how bad off he was," Ferreira said Friday. "Now that I've gotten to know him, I know his problems."

U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney declined comment via e-mail on what impact Wright's health could have on the extradition process, which could last months.

Wright, 68, was convicted of the murder of Walter Patterson in Wall Township. He escaped from the Bayside State Prison in Leesburg in 1970 after serving more than seven years. The FBI says Wright also was part of a Black Liberation Army group that hijacked a U.S. plane from Detroit Metropolitan Airport to Algeria in 1972.

The rest of the group was arrested in France, but Wright made his way to Portugal, and met Valente in the late 1970s. The couple later moved to the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, where the country's then-Marxist leaders granted him asylum and a new identity.

Wright lived openly in Guinea-Bissau and even socialized with U.S. diplomats. One former ambassador who served in the country while Wright was there and other U.S. diplomats who knew Wright have said they did not know about his past.