A Mexican man who is accused of making up a story about a nuclear terrorism attack on Boston has been “extradited” from Mexico to San Diego.
[1] According to US authorities, in January of last year, Jose Ernesto Beltran Quinonez placed 911 calls on a cellphone and told a California Highway Patrol dispatcher that he had “smuggled four Chinese chemists and two Iraqi nationals across the border who were going to receive a nuclear warhead through a tunnel between Mexicali and Calexico.”
[2] The warhead was going to be delivered to the Iraqis and the Chinese chemists were going to set up the warhead in Boston.
[3]The claims “prompted a massive investigation, federal warnings, discussions at President Bush’s security briefing and a nationwide hunt” for the group who were supposedly plotting the attack.
[4] The claims were taken seriously because Mr. Beltran told the CHP dispatcher that he would throw a package containing documents relating to the plan over the border; the package was located the next day.
[5]Mr. Beltran’s case is interesting for a number of reasons. First, he is perhaps only the second person indicted under 18 U.S.C. § 1038(a). (The
Union-Tribune states that he may be the first, but as we showed on
Friday, Gilbert Romero has been charged under the false information and hoaxes statute.)
The second interesting factor in Mr. Beltran’s case is that while news reports are saying that he was extradited, no such process was completed. His case is at least the third case of individuals being forcibly removed from Mexico without going through the appropriate legal processes, following
Arthur March and
Tongsun Park. At the time the threat was made, Mr. Beltran was detained by Mexican authorities, and interviewed by US and Mexican agents, but was released as there was not enough evidence to charge him with anything.
[6] A few months later, however, a provisional arrest warrant was issued in anticipation of
extradition, and in October, Mr. Beltran was detained.
[7] He was released soon thereafter, probably because the US-Mexico extradition
treaty contains a dual-criminality component, and Mexico likely does not have a law that provides for the punishment of a person for making hoaxes.
[8] Finally, this past Saturday, Mr. Beltran was arrested in Mexicali and taken to Mexico City where he was turned over to FBI agents based in San Diego; from there he was taken to San Diego.
[9]The final interesting factor of Mr. Beltran’s case is that US authorities had initially, last January, claimed that the threat involved a dirty bomb; the indictment now alleges that the hoax involved allegations of an actual nuclear weapon, not that it makes a lot of difference when it was just a hoax.
[10] We have seen this type of changed language before, most noticeably with
Jose Padilla.
When Mr. Padilla was initially arrested, there were allegations that he was a dirty-bomber.
[11] Those accusations were dropped, and replaced with accusations that he plotted to blow up apartment buildings.
[12] That didn’t stop reporters from continuing to call him a “dirty bomber.”
[13] Furthermore, in July of last year, in preparation for the appeal before the 4th Circuit which ultimately stated that Mr. Padilla could be held indefinitely, government prosecutors, in their Opening Brief alleged that Mr. Padilla researched building an “atomic bomb.”
[14] This allegation was dropped in subsequent briefs, but it was a noticeable departure from previous allegations and it raises questions of whether the government is trying to tailor the language to increase fear or to be more precise.
Update: We have talked to Kelly Thornton, the reporter named below. She confirms our assumption that Mr. Beltran was released in October because of the dual-criminality component; i.e., Mexico does not criminalize making hoaxes. Furthermore, she points out that Mr. Beltran's indictment came in March of 2005, which means his indictment occurred before Mr. Romero's.
[1] Kelly Thornton, Mexican Man Pleads Not Guilty in U.S. to Dirty-Bomb Hoax, San Diego Union-Tribune, Feb. 7, 2006.
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[11] See Dan Eggen, et al., ”Dirty Bomb” Plot Uncovered, U.S. Says; Suspected Al Qaeda Operative Held as “Enemy Combatant,” Wash. Post, Jun. 11, 2002.
[12] See US DOJ Press Release: Summary of Jose Padilla’s Activities with al Qaeda, Jun. 1, 2004 (via thesmokinggun.com).
[13] See US Appeals Court Upholds Padilla Detention, Agence France-Presse, Sept. 9, 2005; Appeals Court Rules Against Alleged ‘Dirty Bomber,’ CNN.com, Sept. 9, 2005; Court Allows ‘Dirty Bomb’ Suspect to be Held, MSNBC.com, Sept. 9, 2005.
[14] See Jerry Markon, Court to Hear Appeal of Terrorism Suspect, at 2, Wash. Post (via MSNBC.com), Jul. 19, 2005. See also Government’s Opening Brief, Padilla v. Hanft, No. 05-6396 at 9 (4th Cir. 2005) (via wiggin.com). (PDF)
