Extradition hearing this week
Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Dec 20/00) - Alleged terrorist Walter Lothar Ebke won't learn until next year if he will be extradited to Germany to face charges there.
Currently living at the Back Bay Bed and Breakfast in Old Town, Ebke was arrested last spring and then released after friends raised $100,000 bail.
A spokesperson for the Crowns office said proceedings that opened Monday have been adjourned until May 2, 2000. An Immigration Canada hearing for Ebke and three others is set for January. Investigators allege that Yellowknife residents Andrew Spaulding and Agnes Billa, married Ebke and his business partner Regina Pfeifer to get them in to Canada illegally.
Yellowknife was abuzz last May when RCMP arrested Ebke on a provisional warrant on behalf of the German Federal Attorney General. According to a press release from the German Federal Court of Justice, "Lothar E. is urgently suspected of having from 1985 to 1993 been a member of the terrorist organization the Revolutionary Cells in Berlin.
"In wilful co-operation with other known members of this organization ... he is suspected of having committed an attack by explosives" on a social relief office for asylum seekers and the victory column, a monument in Berlin.
The Supreme Court issued a ban on publication of evidence at the extradition hearing..
