5/26/2007

Extradition fight under way

A lawyer for a Glenview businessman pleaded with a federal judge Wednesday not to extradite his client to Poland to face trial for allegedly soliciting the high-profile killing of one of that country's top law enforcement officers.

In a daylong hearing at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, lawyer Chris Gair argued that Edward Mazur would be unfairly tried in the same legal system that concocted a case against him.
"I do not exaggerate when I say you are the only thing standing between my client and the gravest imaginable injustice," Gair told U.S. Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys.

The Polish government wants to try Mazur, 60, for soliciting the killing of Polish national police chief Marek Papala, who was fatally shot in the forehead outside his Warsaw home in 1998.

Keys heard arguments and said he would issue a written ruling "in due course."

Assistant U.S. Atty. Mitchell Mars urged the judge not to try to make a decision on guilt or innocence in this country, but to make the reasonable choice that there is probable cause for Mazur to answer for the crime in Poland.

Several witnesses with links to organized crime have made statements blaming Mazur for setting up the killing, Mars said, and Mazur should be sent to a Polish court to answer the charge.

Polish courts "have common sense, just like we do," said Mars, calling the killing a national tragedy in that country. "They should be allowed to address it in their system."

The attorneys sparred over the accounts of witnesses in the case against Mazur. Among the key people who may testify at a trial is Artur Zirajewski, who allegedly has said he was solicited to carry out the slaying with a third person for $40,000.

Gair attacked Zirajewski's credibility, saying he has given multiple statements that have shifted wildly. Zirajewski has told authorities about secret meetings that Mazur supposedly attended, Gair said, but he has not been consistent on who else was there and what was said.

In some instances Zirajewski said he was hired, yet other times he said he hired someone else, Gair argued.

"He's changing his story because he's making it up," Gair said, who called it preposterous that Mazur would order the killing of Papala, his friend.

Mars argued that there is no evidence of a conspiracy to frame Mazur. The evidence corroborates the accounts of witnesses, he said.

"It's very often the person who's the closest to you that lures you to the murder scene," Mars said. He asked the judge to find probable cause to extradite Mazur by considering the witness testimony in its entirety.

"It holds together," Mars said. "It makes sense."

Polish authorities believe the prominent businessman had underworld connections and possibly wanted Papala killed because he was hindering smuggling. Mazur, who has denied involvement in a sworn statement, has been made a political scapegoat by a new government eager to clear the case, Gair contended.

Ryszard Bieszynski, a former director of the Polish department of criminal investigation, testified Wednesday that in his experience investigating the case, there was no evidence that Mazur had any links to organized crime, or even that organized crime was involved in the killing. Mazur was questioned twice and released, said Bieszynski, who was called as a witness by Gair.
Source:
By Jeff Coen, chicagotribune.com



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