Judge Spares Suspect in Bizarre Plot To Kidnap a North Korean Diplomat From Extradition to Spain

The long ordeal for a central actor in an ill-fated attempt to capture a top diplomat in the North Korean embassy at Madrid seven years ago is nearing an end after a federal judge refused to have him extradited to face trial in Spain.An ex-Marine who had signed on with a group called “Free Joseon,” Christopher Ahn, is now closer to shaking off the constraints imposed on him by an earlier court ruling that required him to wear an ankle bracelet and limited how far he could range from his Los Angeles residence. “Free Joseon” is an ancient name for Korea.Although a lower court had said Mr. Ahn was eligible for extradition, Judge Fernando Aenlle-Rocha of the Central District of California granted his petition for habeas corpus last week, according to the South Korean website NK News. The case can still be appealed to the Ninth Circuit, but he cannot be bundled off to Madrid while petitioning for habeas corpus on the way to exoneration.At the crux of the ruling by Judge Aenlle-Rocha was his determination that North Korean operatives might target Mr. Ahn in Spain for the caper in which an anti-North zealot named Adrian Hong led Mr. Ahn and eight other men into the North Korean embassy to seize the commercial attaché. Mr. Hong claimed the group was seeking to rescue the attaché, who he said had sent messages indicating his yearning for freedom.The stunt fell apart spectacularly after a woman jumped out of a second floor window at the embassy and, while severely injured, managed to flag down a police car. When the police showed up at the embassy door, Mr. Hong, now wearing a lapel pin with the image of the founder of the North Korean regime, Kim Il-sung, opened up and assured them there was no problem. That was good enough for Madrid’s police, who assumed Mr. Hong was a North Korean diplomat and all was well. The gang went on ransacking the embassy, tying up the few North Koreans who were there. After packing up some document and equipment, the intruders took off before the local cops realized what was really going on.Mr. Hong and Mr. Ahn subsequently split up, taking taxis to airports in Portugal and boarding for Newark Liberty Airport. Mr. Hong reportedly gave the FBI or CIA agents with whom he was in cooperating electronic files and other gadgetry that he had picked up at the embassy. He has not been seen or heard from since, and is thought to be under the protection of the CIA or FBI. Mr. Ahn, with no cover, flew home to Los Angeles, where he was questioned, arrested, imprisoned and then subjected to limited freedom while awaiting a trial that the feds are obviously reluctant to stage.Since then, Mr. Ahn has been living in a nether world in which Washington doesn’t want to give the impression to its Spanish ally that it’s not acting on its extradition request in accordance with normal diplomatic process . What, after all, could be more illegal than busting into a foreign embassy, tying people up, ransacking the files and making off with documents?Judge Aenlle-Rocha worked his way around those details, as reported by an investigative journalist, Bradley Hope, author of “The Rebel and the Kingdom: The True Story of the Secret Mission to Overthrow the North Korean Regime,” in a ruling full of legalistic sophistry. “The extradition,” he reported, “failed on probable cause, on dual criminality, on due process under the state-created danger doctrine, and on what the court described as the possible applicability of a humanitarian exception.”“Spain should drop the charges,” Mr. Hope has written. “The commercial attaché who was supposed to be rescued testified that they tried to kidnap him. Of course he did. The alternative was admitting he had been planning to defect from a regime that punishes traitors across three generations of family. He has since been sent home and it’s unclear what became of him and his family.”

Judge Spares Suspect in Bizarre Plot To Kidnap a North Korean Diplomat From Extradition to Spain

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