George Wright, fugitive US hijacker, caught in Portugal after 40 years

George Wright escaped jail in 1970 after eight years for murder, then hijacked plane to Algeria as part of militant group A 1970s militant who escaped from a murder sentence in New Jersey and carried out one of the most brazen hijackings in US history has been captured in Portugal after more than 40 years as a fugitive. There was a sudden break in the case only last wek when police matched his fingerprint to a resident ID card. George Wright, 68, was arrested on Monday by Portuguese authorities in a town near Lisbon at the request of the US government, said a member of the fugitive task force that had been undertaking a renewed search since 2002. Wright was convicted of the 1962 murder of a service station owner in Wall, New Jersey. Authorities said Wright and three associates had already committed multiple armed robberies by 23 November 1962 when he and another man shot and killed Walter Patterson, a decorated second world war veteran and father of two. Wright received a 15- to 30-year sentence and had served eight years when he and three other men escaped from the Bayside State Prison farm in Leesburg, New Jersey, on 19 August 1970. The FBI said Wright then became affiliated with an underground militant group, the Black Liberation Army, and lived in a “communal family” with several of its members in Detroit. On 31 July Wright, dressed as a priest and using the alias the Rev L Burgess, hijacked a Delta Air Lines flight from Detroit to Miami accompanied by three men, two women and three small children from his group. They included Wright’s companion and their two-year-old daughter, according to Associated Press reports at the time. When the plane landed at the Miami airport the hijackers demanded a $1m ransom to free the 86 people on board. After an FBI agent delivered a 32kg (70lb) satchel of money – wearing only a pair of swimming trunks, as per the hijacker’s instructions – the passengers were released, according to AP. The hijackers then forced the plane to Boston, where an international navigator was taken aboard. The group flew on to Algeria where they sought asylum. They were taken in by Eldridge Cleaver, the American writer and activist, who had been permitted by Algeria’s socialist government to open an office of the Black Panther Movement in that country in 1970 after the Algerian president at the time professed sympathy for what he viewed as worldwide liberation struggles. Algerian officials returned the plane and the money to the US at the request of the American government and briefly detained the hijackers before letting them stay. Coverage of the hijackers’ stay in Algeria said their movements were restricted. The Algerian president ignored their calls for asylum and requests to give them back the ransom money. The group eventually made their way to France, where Wright’s associates were tracked down, arrested, tried and convicted in Paris in 1976. France refused to extradite them to the US where they would have faced much longer sentences. According to news reports at the time, the defence hailed the light sentences they were given as “a condemnation of American racism” after the jury found “extenuating circumstances” in their actions, apparently agreeing with the defence’s assertion that the hijacking had been motivated by “racial oppression in the United States”. Wright remained at large and his case was among the top priorities when a New York-New Jersey fugitive task force was formed in 2002, according to Michael Schroeder, a spokesman for the US Marshals Service who worked with New Jersey’s FBI and other agencies on the task force. The US corrections department brought all its old escape cases to the task force, Schroeder said, and investigators started on them afresh. They looked at reports from the 1970s and interviewed Wright’s victims and the pilots of the plane he hijacked. They had age-enhanced sketches made and tried to track down any communication he may have made with family in the US. The address in Portugal was one of several on a list they compiled. But Schroeder said there was nothing about it that made it seem especially promising. “It was another box to get checked, so to speak,” he said. That changed last week when details started falling into place with the help of authorities there. “They have a national ID registry,” Schroeder said. “They pulled that. That confirmed his print matched the prints with the DOC. The sketch matched the picture on his ID card.” By the weekend US authorities were on a plane to Portugal. On Monday Portuguese police staking out the home had found Wright. Schroeder said he has not been told what, if anything, Wright said when he was caught. Wright made an initial court appearance in Portugal on Tuesday, according to US justice department Spokeswoman Laura Sweeney. He was arrested for extradition on the New Jersey murder charge and would serve the remainder of his sentence on that charge if returned to the US. United States guardian.co.uk

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