Peter Paul - whose dealings with Bill and Hillary Clinton sparked an ongoing federal investigation into the former first couple's fund raising - has been wanted in New York to answer stock-manipulation charges since June 2001. In the past, he has fought extradition while negotiating with U.S. investigators, but that all changed recently when Brazilian authorities put him in the dreaded "Corridor of Death."
Paul was put in the notorious Block F of Brazil's maximum-security state penitentiary in Brasilia. The nation's most vicious criminals are housed in Block F, where a favorite pastime among inmates is to burn their fellow prisoners alive in their cells.
The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which represents Paul, reports that 16 inmates have met their ends by immolation there in the last year alone.
"It's extremely dangerous for him there," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton tells PAGE SIX's Ian Spiegelman. "He's already been threatened."
Fitton says there's an ongoing war between various prison factions and that "Americans aren't very popular" with any of them. As far as the inmates of Block F are concerned, "Getting an American would be a coup."
Paul has claimed that he can prove Sen. Clinton accepted at least $2 million in campaign contributions from him in 2000 but reported only $500,000 of it.
It's a mystery why Paul remained in a Brazil jail even after that country's Supreme Court decided he should be extradited last December. After that, Fitton says he continually pressured officials at the U.S. Embassy to fetch Paul, but they told him they needed "official" notice from the Brazilian foreign minister before they could do so.
Oddly, just days after that official notice was sent, Paul was transferred to the Corridor of Death on Aug. 20 while U.S. authorities continued to show no interest in following through with the extradition.
After several complaints from Fitton, the feds finally decided on Friday that Paul would be returned to the United States on Sept. 12, if he's lucky.
Sen. Clinton's rep declined comment. Link
HLL, please save this hideous pic of hilly on your shutter fly.