Thread: Suspected Assassin Nabbed In N.Y. Car Stop

http://cbs2.com/topstories/topstories_s ... 73725.html

Feb 14, 2007 12:55 pm US/Pacific

Suspected Assassin Nabbed In N.Y. Car Stop
Man Pulled Over For Seat Belt Violation, Found To Be Wanted Overseas
(AP) BUFFALO, N.Y. An Ecuadorean man pulled over in an upstate New York hamlet for not wearing his seat belt has been returned to his home country to face charges he assassinated a former presidential candidate in 1999, U.S. immigration officials said Wednesday.

Christian Steven Ponce Salas, 36, was turned over to Ecuadorean officials in Quito, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Michael Gilhooly said. He had been held in a federal detention facility in Batavia, east of Buffalo, since shortly after his Feb. 3 arrest in the hamlet of Palenville, about 40 miles south of Albany.

Authorities said he was in the United States illegally and had been a fugitive since last February, when he defied a deportation order by a U.S. Immigration judge in Miami.

Ponce Salas was wanted in Ecuador in connection with the killing of two members of the Ecuadorean National Congress, former presidential candidate Jaime Hurtado and Pablo Tapia, and a bodyguard, Wellington Borja, immigration officials said. All were shot dead outside Ecuador's Congress on Feb. 17, 1999.

Investigators have said they believe Ponce Salas helped the gunmen obtain weapons and participated in surveillance. He and others were arrested two days after the shootings and Ponce Salas later fled Ecuador.

At the time of his upstate traffic stop, Greene County Sheriff's Deputy Greg Stewart said Ponce Salas was working at a restaurant. He was pulled over for not wearing his seat belt, but a check of his license and for warrants showed he was wanted in Ecuador.

"This removal is an example of excellent cooperation between the local, federal and international police community," said William Cleary, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office director in Buffalo.

Wow, even assassins feel comfortable hiding out in America.

What new he is a hard working undocumented worker taking a job American will not do and do not want CGW.

Originally Posted by CCUSA

Wow, even assassins feel comfortable hiding out in America.

Added to Homepage

http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=N ... e&sid=1944

We should be sending criminals back to their country. They are going to spread their violence in our country and we really have more than our share of americans who now believe it is ok to violence on another american.

thank God they got this guy, he participated in the assasination of a Good man, a man that was trying to fight corruption in Ecuador, the corruption that is making it's citizens leave illegally to the US.