FEDERAL MISCONDUCT CREATES AN INCIDENT IN COSTA RICA

Federal agents believed Israel Abel was a leader in a major cocaine
smuggling ring in the 1980s that imported 3 tons of cocaine from Colombia
to Miami. They wanted him so badly that they were willing to go to lengths
that would lead another country to file criminal charges against U.S.
officials.

In 1991, a federal grand jury indicted Abel and several others on
drug-smuggling charges, but by then he had been living in Costa Rica for
five years and, by most accounts, was no longer in the drug business.

But federal agents were so desperate to bring him to trial that they
violated his most basic rights and then tried to cover up their actions,
Abel’s lawyers charge.

Because of the magnitude of the charges against him, it seems unlikely any
court will intervene, even though the government of Costa Rica has issued
criminal arrest warrants against the former deputy attorney general to
Attorney General Janet Reno and a former U.S. Consular officer because of
their conduct.

The U.S. government extradited Abel in 1992. The Justice Department sent
Deputy Attorney General Richard Scruggs, a former Miami federal prosecutor,
to Costa Rica. Costa Rican police then arrested Abel and turned him over to
U.S. agents on an American jetliner. He was brought home, tried and
sentenced to four life sentences in prison.

Scruggs said everything went off without a hitch. Abel said Costa Rican and
American agents kidnapped him, hid him for two days then shipped him back
to the United States without benefit of the due process that laws in Costa
Rica and the United States guarantee.

In summer 1993, Costa Rican officials, after scouring the documentation
provided when Scruggs requested extradition, filed the first of three
protests with the American government related to Abel’s case. They charged
that Scruggs collaborated with over-zealous members of the Costa Rican
National Migration board to "circumvent the country’s extradition
procedures."

Within months, Costa Rica filed criminal charges against Scruggs and Donna
Hamilton, a U.S. Consular officer in San Jose. Hamilton was transferred out
of the country before she could be tried. Neither she nor Scruggs will face
those charges, as long as they don’t return to Costa Rica.

Robert Scola, Abel’s lawyer, has asked the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals in
Atlanta to dismiss the case against Abel because of prosecutorial misconduct.

The appeal charged that the government’s documents, obtained through
Freedom of Information Act requests, "irrefutably demonstrate . . . the
knowing use of both perjured testimony and affidavits by (Assistant United
States Attorney Karen) Rochlin before and during evidentiary hearings."

Despite discovery requests, "None of these documents have ever been turned
over to the defendant," Abel’s appellate brief stated.

Checked-by: Richard Lake