Health of U.S. fugitive cited

The wife of captured American fugitive George Wright said Friday that her husband has multiple health problems that require treatment and that he should not be extradited to the United States to serve the rest of his time on a murder conviction after 41 years on the lam.

In an interview at the couple's home in Almocageme, Portugal, Maria do Rosario Valente said Wright has glaucoma and "very, very high" blood pressure caused by recent stress, and has complained of chest pains.

"We're having a bunch of tests done to see what's his current health condition," Valente said.

Wright "regrets the choices he has made," she said. "If he could, he probably would have made different choices."

Wright, tall and slim with his head shaved bald, did not participate in the interview because of Portuguese legal restrictions that prevent him from talking about the case. After it was over, he kissed her and made small talk about matters unrelated to his legal battle.

Manuel Luis Ferreira, Wright's lawyer, said he would include his client's health problems in legal arguments aimed at preventing him from being sent to the United States to serve the rest of a 15- to 30-year sentence for the 1962 killing of a worker at a gas station in Monmouth County, N.J.

"I didn't initially realize how bad off he was," Ferreira said Friday. "Now that I've gotten to know him, I know his problems."

U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney declined comment via e-mail on what impact Wright's health could have on the extradition process, which could last months.

Wright, 68, was convicted of the murder of Walter Patterson in Wall Township. He escaped from the Bayside State Prison in Leesburg in 1970 after serving more than seven years. The FBI says Wright also was part of a Black Liberation Army group that hijacked a U.S. plane from Detroit Metropolitan Airport to Algeria in 1972.

The rest of the group was arrested in France, but Wright made his way to Portugal, and met Valente in the late 1970s. The couple later moved to the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, where the country's then-Marxist leaders granted him asylum and a new identity.

Wright lived openly in Guinea-Bissau and even socialized with U.S. diplomats. One former ambassador who served in the country while Wright was there and other U.S. diplomats who knew Wright have said they did not know about his past.

His wife worked for years as a freelance translator for the U.S. embassy in the country's capital, Bissau, and Wright was a logistics coordinator for a Belgian nonprofit development group until the couple moved back to Portugal in 1993.

Valente said her husband has become a more peaceful man. She showed photographs of paintings by Wright and artwork at local buildings - a skill which has allowed him to earn money in Portugal among other odd jobs he's done over the years.

She was interviewed in English in the kitchen of the home she has shared with Wright almost since they left Guinea-Bissau, at the end of a cobblestone street in a pretty hamlet on the Atlantic coast about 25 miles from Lisbon.

The FBI says it requested Wright's detention after providing Portuguese authorities his fingerprints, which were contained in a national database for all citizens and residents. He was initially jailed, but a judge allowed him to return home wearing an electronic tag.

Neighbors have described Wright as a friendly, churchgoing family man. He has a grown daughter and son with Valente. Some assumed he was from Africa when he moved here.

"If . . . the purpose of sending someone to jail is to rehabilitate them, then that job is done," Valente said.

The main argument from Wright's lawyer for him to stay in Portugal is his Portuguese citizenship - and a law that allows Portuguese convicted of crimes to serve their time at home.

The citizenship is based on his new identity as Jorge Luis Jorge dos Santos from Guinea-Bissau, including fake names for his parents.

He married Valente in 1990, and used his new identity and the marriage to persuade Portuguese authorities to give him citizenship.

Ann Patterson, daughter of the man killed in New Jersey, declined to comment Friday on Wright's health problems. She wants him returned to serve his sentence, she said.

"Our world has been turned upside down," said Patterson, 63. "We've now had to grieve for our father for the second time when we never should have had to the first time."