Poland Asks Costa Rica to Extradite Former Nazi
Poland on Friday asked Costa Rica to arrest and
extradite a Ukrainian national who Polish
authorities accuse of killing dozens of Jews while
serving as a Nazi policeman in World War II.
Foreign Minister Roberto Tovar said the Polish
Embassy in San Jose requested the extradition of
Bogdan Koziy, now aged 81, who has been resident in
Costa Rica for two decades.
"We have only been waiting for this request to get
him out of Costa Rica where he is a persona non
grata for us," Security Minister Rogelio Ramos told
Reuters. "We know where he is, he's perfectly
findable, and we are going to arrest him and remove
him from Costa Rica."
Koziy is alleged to have killed a four-year-old girl
and to have participated in the slaying of a whole
family near the end of 1943.
According to Costa Rican files on Koziy, the former
Nazi left Europe after the end of the war and went
to the United States, where he obtained residency in
1957.
That residency was canceled 27 years later when his
Nazi past was uncovered. Since then he has lived in
Costa Rica.
Shannon Martin Murder Defendant Threatens Witness
Luis Carrillo, on trial Shannon Martin's murder, a
University of Kansas student killed in May 2001,
was jailed this week for allegedly threatening a
witness.
Authorities accused Carrillo of hitting and
threatening to kill witness Daniel Mosquera.
The other two defendants, Kattia Murillo and Rafael
Quesada, have been jailed since their arrest. But
Castro had been allowed to remain free.
Attorneys are scheduled to present final arguments
on Monday in Golfito.
Martin, from Topeka, Kansas, was 23 years old when
she died. She was stabbed to death after she left a
nightclub in Golfito. Martin was in Costa Rica to
gather specimens for a biology project.
Sex Tourist Gets
15 Years
James Kirging,
a tourist in Costa Rica, was sentenced to 15 years
in prison for having sexual relations with minors.
The sentence was handed down by the tribunal courts
in San José.
The man was arrested in September last year after
was discovered that he had sex with a minors, paying
them different amounts each time.
Kirging was a professor of marketing in New Jersey,
and until his arrest, had been a frequent visitor to
Costa Rica for more than 4 years. Immigration
records confirmed that he entered and left Costa
Rica many times since 1998.
Casa Alianza, the child welfare protection group,
expressed satisfaction at the sentence handed down
by the courts.
The sentence sends a clear message to the world and
more particular to sexual abusers that Costa Rica
will deal with these types of offenders with a firm
hand.
The sentence comes at the heels of a message by
President Pacheco that Costa Rica will get tough on
sex tourism.
Space Tug
Besides taking people
to Mars, the plasma engine developed by Costa
Rica-born NASA astronaut Franklin Chang might have
another mission: powering a spacecraft designed to
tug asteroids away from an Earth orbit.
Several
scientists who for several years have focused on
studying the ability to prevent an asteroid from
impacting the Earth presented this theory in the
November issue of the Scientific American
magazine.
The space tug would push the asteroid away
from the Earth orbit, thus preventing a collision
with our planet. The current engines do not have the
ability to engage in such a mission, but the
scientists see a promising device in the one
developed by Chang, primarily for traveling to
Mars..
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