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The state's first target in its overseas crackdown is Manny Farina, who was 20 when he was jailed in 1986 for a string of assaults, burglaries and thefts in Essex County. Less than a year later, he bolted from a minimum- security unit of Albert C. Wagner Youth Correctional Facility in New Lisbon. He ended up in South America, where investigators say he bounced from country to country, ending up in Colombia. He recently was taken into custody there on drug charges. "We've been tracking him for several years, and we are going to extradite him very shortly," said Debbe Faunce, the Department of Corrections' chief investigator. Brown said he has agreed to spend about $15,000 to send Essex County prosecutors to Colombia to bring Farina back. "What we're saying is, if it costs us to come after you, we'll bear that cost and there will be consequences for what you've done," Brown said. ...

...State officials don't anticipate many problems returning Farina to New Jersey. Colombia's government makes it relatively easy to obtain a fugitive, officials say. France, however, has been known to resist extraditions, particularly those of murderers. That's where investigators say they believe Wright and Brown now reside. Their marijuana-fueled 1972 hijacking, in which they forced federal agents dressed only in bathing suits to deliver $1 million in cash to their DC-8 airliner in Miami, is one of the most brazen on record. Wright, 29 at the time of the hijacking, had been convicted of murder and armed robbery and was serving a 15- to 30-year sentence at the time of his escape. Brown, then 28, was serving three to five years for a 1967 armed robbery in Elizabeth when he fled. They met in prison.

Both were members of the Black Liberation Army, a loosely affiliated group of black militants who advocated armed resistance to racial oppression. They and their fellow hijackers were living together in Detroit, where they boarded the Miami-bound jet on July 31. For the hijacking, Wright disguised himself as a priest. They released the 86 passengers unhurt after receiving the $1 million, then forced the crew to fly to Algiers, where they sought political asylum. Authorities there released them days later, but not before seizing the $1 million, which they returned to the United States.

Investigators in New Jersey are not sure how the hijackers made it to France, but in 1978, French authorities sentenced Brown and three others, including Wright's common-law wife, Joyce Tillerson, to short prison terms for air piracy. Attempts to extradite them to the United States failed, investigators say. Wright was never prosecuted. Authorities believe both men still live in France. Tillerson recently died there.

Some interesting things here. I didn't know the BLA had a hijacking under their belt.