Extradition

Tennessee Gov. Ned R. McWherter signed extradition papers yesterday to send Jose Hernandez back to Pennsylvania to face first-degree murder charges in the deaths of four members of his family. Hernandez, 17, has been in Metro Juvenile Detention Center in Nashville since his arrest in Dickson County, Tenn., on March 24, three days after the bodies of his father, pregnant stepmother and two brothers were discovered piled in a bathtub in the family apartment in the 600 block of North Seventh Street.

Accused murderer and fugitive Ralph Birdsong will be turned over to Philadelphia police by week's end, after he appears in a Florida court, authorities said yesterday. Birdsong, 28, waived an extradition hearing yesterday before a U.S. magistrate in Fort Lauderdale. He is expected to do the same today or tomorrow when he appears in Broward County Circuit Court, authorities said. Wearing leg irons, grey sweatpants and work boots, Birdsong told Magistrate Lurana Snow that Philadelphia authorities had confiscated most of his possessions.

John Peter Galanis, charged in multimillion-dollar investment swindles that include Atlantic City's failed Boardwalk Marketplace project, waived extradition to New York at his arraignment yesterday in San Diego Municipal Court. Galanis, 44, of Del Mar, a San Diego suburb, was being held last night in the San Diego County Jail on a fugitive charge pending his extradition, authorities said. Galanis and his bookkeeper, Laurence H. Klusky, 40, signed extradition waivers at a joint arraignment yesterday morning, court officials said.

An attorney for former federal judge Herbert A. Fogel filed an appeal yesterday in Tennessee to block Fogel's return to Philadelphia to face criminal contempt charges for leaving an alcohol recovery center nearly five months early. Nashville attorney Richard McGee said the appeal claims Fogel was being "illegally detained" in Tennessee. He said extradition papers sent by Pennsylvania were flawed because they do not say Fogel committed a crime in Pennsylvania and do not establish that he's a fugitive.

Ira Einhorn, the one-time hippie-philosopher convicted of murdering his Philadelphia girlfriend in 1977, gained another five weeks of freedom yesterday as a French court postponed a decision on whether to extradite him to the United States. Without explanation, a panel of three French judges announced that they would not issue their extradition ruling until Feb. 18. The unexpected delay freed Einhorn to return to his cottage in the French countryside, and disappointed the three sisters of his dead girlfriend, Holly Maddux.

The Irish Supreme Court conducted a hearing yesterday on whether Dessie Ellis should be sent off to England to face charges that he was involved in a deadly Irish Republican Army bombing campaign in 1981. Ellis was not in attendance. The 38-year-old former television repairman spent this day, the 30th day of his hunger strike against extradition, confined to his bed at Curragh Hospital. He was taken to the hospital Wednesday from Portlaoise Prison, his home for the last 7 1/2 years.

A Florida prosecutor said yesterday that he would not seek extradition of a former Cumberland Farms cashier who said she was falsely accused of theft by the convenience store's security officials. Shirley Wells DiSalvo, 22, of Magnolia, Del., was nine months pregnant in August when she was picked up by Delaware State Police, imprisoned for five days and threatened with extradition to face trial in a theft that allegedly occurred four years ago in Florida. At a hearing in Dover, Del., yesterday, DiSalvo, who has since given birth to a boy, was told Florida officials would not seek her extradition.

The Panama Canal Treaties give the United States the legal right to demand the extradition of deposed strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega, according to specialists in international law. But they say extradition isn't just about law, it's about politics, too. With Noriega now holed up in the Vatican mission in Panama City, it was uncertain yesterday where he would next reside. Noriega's predicament can be summed up as follows: The Vatican's got him. The United States wants him. The new Panamanian government says the United States can't have him. As of yesterday, the United States was hoping to have Noriega extradited to Florida to face drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges, said a State Department official working for the Panama Task Force.

For two weeks, a U.S. government plane has been standing idle at an airport in Bogota, Colombia, a silent symbol of U.S. officials' current problems in using a blunt legal instrument to help Colombia in its war with drug lords. That instrument is extradition - in short, the transfer of a criminal suspect from one country to another for prosecution. It is a powerful weapon of law enforcement that has been in use since before the Middle Ages, with its modern use dating from the first extradition law adopted by the Belgians 156 years ago. Under extradition, one country hands over a fugitive from another country, without any final proof that the fugitive is actually guilty of any crime.

A man who pleaded guilty earlier this month to the indecent assault of a Malvern girl is now facing extradition to Delaware for violating a lifetime parole stemming from a rape conviction in 1972. John Barton Hand, 43, of Collingdale, is being held in Chester County Prison on $100,000 cash bail following his arrest on Thursday on a fugitive warrant from Delaware, Lt. Hugh Murray of the Willistown Township Police Department said yesterday. Murray said Hand was sentenced to 10 years' probation by Chester County Common Pleas Court Judge M. Joseph Melody Jr. following his guilty plea on March 14. Police said the victim was baby-sitting at Hand's residence in October 1992 when the sexual assault occurred.

TUNIS, Tunisia - Tunisia said Tuesday that it will soon extradite Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi back to his homeland, after detaining the former Libyan prime minister for eight months. Mahmoudi was arrested in September for illegally crossing the frontier into Tunisia as he tried to flee to Algeria, where members of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's family had sought refuge. Lawyers and human-rights groups had opposed the extradition, saying Mahmoudi might be harmed by Libya's new ruling authorities - representative of the rebels who overthrew Gadhafi last year.

A Pottstown murder suspect who fled to Broward County, Florida, last month has been returned to this area to face charges he killed his girlfriend, 31-year-old Alicia Schmidt, police said today. Edwin Carrero, 32, appeared for arraignment at 1 p.m. on Saturday before Magisterial District Court Judge Edward C. Kropp, Sr. in Pottstown. The judge ordered Carrero held without bail at the Montgomery County prison on murder and related offenses. Police say that sometime on Feb. 2, Carrero allegedly choked Schmidt at her home in the 400 block of Cherry Street and pushed her down a flight of stairs.

NEW DELHI - A New Delhi court agreed Saturday to try admitted American terrorist David Headley and eight others for allegedly carrying out the deadly 2008 attacks in Mumbai, local media reported. The court's decision allows Indian investigators to seek Headley's extradition from the United States, where he is in prison after admitting to laying the groundwork for the three-day shooting rampage in India's largest city. However, his plea agreement with U.S. authorities said Headley would not be extradited if he cooperated with investigators.

Extradition set for Noriega PARIS - An attorney for Manuel Noriega said Wednesday the former Panamanian strongman was to be extradited from France to his homeland Sunday. Attorney Yves Leberquier said it was "good news" that "this old and tired man" is returning home "after more than 20 years in American and French prisons. " French authorities approved two extradition requests by Panama, which plans to retry Noriega in two cases in which he was convicted in absentia. Noriega was ousted in the United States' 1989 invasion of Panama, convicted of drug racketeering in Miami, and served 20 years in a U.S. prison.

LONDON - Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing WikiLeaks website, is free to ask Britain's highest court to decide whether he should be extradited to Sweden on allegations of sexual assault, judges ruled Monday. A lower court said Assange could apply directly to Britain's Supreme Court to hear his controversial case. Assange, 40, has been battling extradition to Stockholm, the Swedish capital, since a judge ruled in February that he should be sent there to face accusations of raping and molesting two women.

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - The nation's former strongman, who nearly dragged his country into civil war in a bid to retain power, is being extradited to the International Criminal Court after the issuance of a warrant for his arrest, his spokesman said Tuesday. Former President Laurent Gbagbo had been under house arrest in the village of Korhogo more than 300 miles north of Abidjan since being ousted by internationally backed forces seven months ago. A plane believed to be carrying Gbagbo landed in the early-morning hours Wednesday in the Netherlands ahead of his transfer to the court in the Hague.

PARIS - A French court ruled Wednesday that former dictator Manuel Noriega can be extradited to Panama to serve time for past crimes, more than 20 years after being ousted and arrested in a U.S. invasion. The elderly former Panamanian strongman hasn't seen his homeland in more than two decades, years he spent behind bars in Florida on drug charges, and in France for money-laundering. His lawyer said he could be in Panama as soon as Thursday. Panama wants Noriega returned to serve prison terms handed down after he was convicted in absentia for embezzlement, corruption, and murder.

LISBON, Portugal - A Portuguese court Thursday denied a U.S. request for the extradition of a captured American fugitive who spent 41 years on the run in a journey that took him across three continents, and included the brazen 1972 hijacking of a jet from America to Algeria. George Wright, 68, told reporters he was "very happy, morally and spiritually," with the decision. He said that his extradition to serve the rest of a sentence for a fatal New Jersey gas-station robbery in 1962 was not justified because it was his accomplices who fired the shots that killed the owner.

Two suspects in the shooting death of a man whose body was dumped down an embankment in Chester County have been returned to the area and face a preliminary hearing Wednesday at District Court in Oxford. Melanie Ann Ray, 25, and Chandler G. Clark, 20, both of Franklin, Pa., were extradited Wednesday from Indianapolis, where they were arrested, Chester County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Ost-Prisco said Friday. They are accused of killing Andre J. Dupuis, 32, a landscape manager from Aston, late Aug. 6 in West Nottingham Township to steal his truck.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The last suspect wanted by the U.N. war-crimes tribunal was extradited and jailed Friday, paving the way for the final prosecution by the court created at the height of the bloody ethnic wars in the crumbling Yugoslavia. Serbia's handover of former Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic marks the end of nearly two decades of efforts to bring to justice 161 indicted military and political figures who led the Balkans through five years of turmoil that killed more than 100,000.