LISBON, Portugal ? U.S. officials tred cautiously Friday after the lawyer for an American killer and alleged hijacker said his client wanted to serve the rest of his jail time in Portugal rather than be extradicted to the United States.
Lawyer Manuel Luis Ferreira says George Wright, 68, deserves to serve the remainder of his 15- to 30-year New Jersey murder sentence in Portugal because he has lived in the country for decades, has a Portuguese wife and grown Portuguese children.
"If he has to serve, then he wants it to be here, which is his home," Ferreira told Portugal's TVI television.
U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney declined to comment on the defense counsel's arguments due to the pending extradition request against Wright.
Wright broke out of the Bayside State Prison in Leesburg, New Jersey, on Aug. 19, 1970, after serving over 7 years of his sentence for killing a man in a 1962 gas station robbery. He was also part of a Black Liberation Army group that hijacked a U.S. plane to Algeria in 1972.
Wright was captured in a seaside village near Lisbon on Monday after authorities matched his fingerprint on a Portuguese identity card to one in the United States. Until his arrest, he spent 41 years on the lam, including decades living with his Portguese wife and children in a seaside hamlet.
The U.S. has requested extradition based solely on Wright's murder conviction, not his involvement in the hijacking.
Ferreira said Wright will oppose extradition on the grounds that he fears reprisals for his past membership in the militant U.S. group.
He said his client had been living openly in Portugal and even had a Facebook page.
"He wasn't running. He wasn't hiding," Ferreira told TVI.
But Ferreira didn't mention that Wright was living in Portugal under the alias Jose Luis Jorge dos Santos, the name listed on his Portuguese residency card.
The United States, meanwhile, confirmed that Wright's Portuguese wife worked as an occasional freelance translator for the U.S. Embassy in the West African nation of Guinea-Bisseau from 1984 to 1990. Wright himself did not work for the embassy, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Friday.
Wright lived openly with his wife under his real name in Guinea-Bisseau, a former Portuguese colony, and even socialized with U.S. embassy officials there. A former U.S. ambassador told The Associated Press he knew Wright but had no idea he was a fugitive.
After a 41-year odessey that spanned three continents, Wright is being held in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, pending extradition hearings. He has asked to be set free during those hearings, a request that is still pending. If the U.S. wins the extradition request, Wright can appeal that decision to Portugal's Supreme Court and the country's Constitutional Court, a process that could last years.
U.S. officials so far have only discussed Wright's past murder conviction, not any possible future charges from the hijacking or his New Jersey prison escape.
"He's already been convicted on the homicide charge, for which we are seeking his extradition, and faces the remainder of that sentence," Sweeney said.
Danielle Hunter, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Corrections, said there has bee no talk so far of adding charges relating to Wright's prison escape.
But Douglas McNabb, a Washington-based lawyer who has defended people in extradition cases, said he expects the U.S. to add some charges related to the hijacking to make an example of Wright.
"This taints the U.S's image that someone could be gone and not found as long as he was," McNabb said.
Hijacking in the United States carries a possible penalty of life in prison, and Portugal does not allow people to be extradited if they will face more than the nation's maximum sentence of 25 years.
Under Portuguese law, citizens can serve sentences handed down in a foreign country in Portugal. But Portuguese officials say there is doubt about the validity of Wright's identification documents and whether he is a citizen like his wife and children.
A photocopy of a Portuguese identity card issued to Wright in 1993 listed his home country as Guinea-Bissau. A foreigner marrying a Portuguese is entitled to Portuguese nationality, but has to formally request it and it is not known whether Wright did.
Norris Gelman, the Philadelphia lawyer who represented fugitive Ira Einhorn, said he expects U.S. authorities to pursue Wright to the end now that they have found him.
"(They) will move heaven and earth to get him back here, and I believe they will be successful. If they have to do it through diplomacy, they will do it through diplomacy," he said. "Time will not heal this wound."
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Alan Clendenning in from Madrid, Matthew Lee in Washington, Shawn Marsh in Trenton, New Jersey, and Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, New Jersey, contributed to this story.
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