FUGITIVE IN POT RING CASE RETURNED TO HUB COURT

An international fugitive running for more than a decade from charges he
brokered massive marijuana shipments to New England was nabbed in Paris and
brought before a federal judge in Boston yesterday.

U.S. Marshals and Drug Enforcement Administration agents accompanied
Richard Booker from France after he was stopped at a Paris airport Monday
while attempting to enter the country to visit his ex-wife and two sons.

"He just ran out of luck," said one investigator. "He thought he was going
to get away with this."

First indicted in Boston in 1989, the 60-year-old alleged kingpin
originally fled from Miami in 1989 when the Boston indictment shattered a
drug ring once described as a cadre of "children of the '60s."

Yesterday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Lawrence P. Cohen ordered Booker held
without bail and set a detention hearing for Aug. 28.

The indictment accuses Booker, who holds duel citizenship in France and
England, of ordering freighters full of drugs to St. Bart's in the
Caribbean. There, the marijuana was loaded into sailboats, according to the
indictment.

Booker allegedly sent the shipments to Ralph Maling and his three brothers
in what was called the biggest marijuana ring in New England at the time,
authorities said. The ring's drug importation dated back to 1972 and
brought more than 100,000 pounds of weed to the Boston area.

Maling was sentenced in 1990 to 10 years in prison without parole.

Booker had been captured in 1994 in Paris but allegedly sailed away to
Senegal while awaiting an extradition hearing. This time, the French gave
U.S. officials 24 hours to come and get Booker, sources said.