Posted on 11/10/2002 12:17:33 AM PST by sarcasm
CAPE TOWN - The last fugitive member of a notorious 1970s U.S. revolutionary group will be extradited from South Africa only if U.S. authorities promise to spare him the death penalty, officials said Saturday.
James Kilgore, once a key soldier in the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) that kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in 1974 before co-opting her into its ranks, was arrested in Cape Town on Friday.
"If the crime committed carries a death penalty, then our extradition act prohibits us to extradite that person to the requesting state," said South African Justice spokesman Paul Setsetse.
"We have not received an application for his extradition. If indeed we receive it, we will consider it on its own merit," he told the local news agency SAPA.
Police spokeswoman Mary Martins-Engelbrecht said Kilgore, 55, had been on the run from the Federal Bureau of Investigation for more than two decades.
"Interpol South Africa became involved about three months ago when informed that he could be hiding here. He was traced and arrested at his house in Claremont, Cape Town on Friday evening," Martins-Engelbrecht told AFP.
She said Kilgore, facing charges of murder, armed robbery and the illegal possession of destructive devices, had been living in South Africa for about five years under the name Charles Pape, and working as a lecturer at the University of Cape Town.
Martins-Engelbrecht said he would appear in a Cape Town court on Monday and a formal extradition request was expected to follow.
Kilgore's arrest came as four of his former comrades pleaded guilty to murdering a bank customer during a 1975 robbery in California in which Patty Hearst drove the getaway car.
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