Posted on 09/07/2003 1:55:53 AM PDT by witnesstothefall
HOUSTON, Sep 05, 2003 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- A federal judge granted bond Friday to a British man who spent nearly a decade on the lam until arrested this week on charges he attempted to buy a U.S. fighter plane to kill a former Colombian drug lord.
The decision by U.S. Magistrate Judge Frances Stacy will allow David Brian Tomkins, 63, to stay with a sister-in-law in Ohio if she agrees to help him post the $5,000 needed to make bail.
The judge said she was "kind of torn" about granting bond to a man with a history of fleeing from the law, but she also hinted that the case against Tomkins may be weak - a possible explanation for the decision. A federal prosecutor at the hearing did not object to the bail.
Tomkins was arrested at the Houston airport by federal agents this week after a flight from London. He had intended to attend survival training courses in Texas to qualify for a security job for a firm involved in reconstruction in Iraq, authorities said.
Tomkins was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami in 1994 on charges of attempting to buy an A-37 Dragonfly fighter plane three years earlier from undercover federal agents. He gave them a $25,000 down payment in December 1991 for the Vietnam-era plane, then fled the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Friday.
The plane was to be used to bomb a Colombian prison then housing Pablo Escobar, who ran the now-defunct Medellin drug cartel. Tomkins sought to buy bombs as well and to obtain a helicopter to survey the prison after the attack, officials say.
Federal authorities say Tomkins told them he was a mercenary and was to be paid $10 million by the rival Cali drug cartel to assassinate Escobar. Escobar was killed in 1993 by Colombian police after escaping from prison.
Michael J. Garcia, acting chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Friday from Washington that Tomkins' arrest "removes a key player from the ranks of international arms dealers."
Asked after the 20-minute hearing Friday when Tomkins would be released, his lawyer, Brent Newton, said: "Not any time soon." He declined additional comment.
If his sister-in-law posts the bond, Tomkins agreed to remain in the area of Ohio where she lives. He also agreed to try to get a job, be monitored electronically, abide with a curfew and appear at hearings in federal court in the Southern District of Florida where the indictment was issued nine years ago.
Tomkins is charged with conspiring to export the A-37 jet without the required State Department license. Stacy said conviction could get him up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The decision by U.S. Magistrate Judge Frances Stacy....Only in the USA? Blackbird.
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