South Africa’s government has not yet received a formal request to extradite Symbionese Liberation Army leader James Kilgore to the United States, Justice Ministry representative Paul Setsetse said on
Saturday.
”We have not received an application for his extradition,” Setsetse said. ”If indeed we receive it, we will consider it on its own merit.”
Kilgore (55) the last remaining member of the SLA, a radical group that committed politically motivated crimes in the United States in the 1970s, might not be extradited if Washington does not promise not to execute him.
Setsetse said that in terms of South Africa’s extradition laws, a person could only be extradited after the country requesting the extradition stated clearly what sentence would be imposed.
”If the crime committed carries a death penalty, then our extradition act prohibits us to extradite that person to the requesting state,” said Setsetse.
Kilgore had been on the run from the FBI for the past 26 years. South African police traced him to his home in Claremont, Cape Town, and arrested him at 7.15pm on Friday.
He had been living in Cape Town for the last five years under the name Charles Pape. He is wanted for murder, armed robbery and illegal possession of destructive devices. The last charge refers to homemade bombs.
Senior Superintendent Mary Martins-Engelbrecht said it was thought that Kilgore had been in Zimbabwe before he moved to South Africa.
South African police began searching for him at Interpol’s request about three months ago. The most notorious of the SLA’s crimes was the kidnapping of
American newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in 1974. The SLA brainwashed Hearst into joining them.
She was convicted of bank robbery committed while part of the SLA, but was later pardoned by then-president Gerald Ford. The SLA thought of their crimes as revolutionary justice on behalf of racial minorities in the US.
Kilgore is expected to appear in the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court on Monday. – Sapa