Israel Orders Murder Suspect Returned to L.A. for Trial : Extradition: Rochelle Manning, 53, may also be responsible for the 1985 bombing death of Arab-American Alex Odeh in Santa Ana, police say.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a woman suspected in the 1980 bomb death of a secretary at a Manhattan Beach computer company should be extradited to the United States for trial on murder charges.
The woman, Rochelle Manning, 53, also has been mentioned as a possible suspect in a bombing in Santa Ana in 1985.
In a unanimous decision, a panel of five judges ordered that Manning be returned to Los Angeles within 60 days to stand trial with her husband, Robert, 41, who was extradited last month.
Robert and Rochelle Manning are accused of using a bomb hidden in an electrical appliance to kill Patricia Wilkerson, 32, a secretary at the Prowest Computer Corp. Investigators believe the bomb was intended for Wilkerson’s boss, Brenda Crouthamel Adams.
Although never charged, Robert Manning also has been named the prime suspect in the 1985 bombing death in Santa Ana of Alex Odeh, head of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Western office. Robert Manning, an American-trained demolitions expert, has been linked to the militant Jewish Defense League in the U.S. and the ultra-nationalist Kach movement in Israel. U.S. officials say he is a suspect in several other bombings linked to Rabbi Meir Kahane, the militant Jewish leader assassinated in New York in 1990.
Rochelle Manning listened to Monday’s extradition decision without any display of emotion, but her daughter, Ilana, 20, burst into tears.
“My whole life has stopped,†Ilana Manning said. “The whole life of my sister Moriah has stopped. . . . I think this is shameful, an embarrassment to the State of Israel.â€
The decision brought angry protests from the Mannings’ friends, who crowded the courtroom for what was probably the final decision in the couple’s long fight against extradition. For them, the ruling struck at the heart of Israeli nationalism--the defense of Jews from foreign threats.
“These judges send away Jews without evidence, without proof,†one supporter said. “They can release that Nazi, John Demjanjuk (the retired Ohio auto worker accused of war crimes), but Jews they send off to those who are like the Nazis, to the FBI.â€
Rochelle Manning, appealing an earlier extradition order, argued that she had already been tried in 1988 for the crime in the United States and that a second trial on the same charge would violate her civil rights under Israeli law.
But the five judges said in their 18-page decision that because the jury in the first trial failed to reach a verdict, a second trial would not constitute double jeopardy under Israeli or American law.
Investigators in Los Angeles County say the bomb that killed Wilkerson was mailed to her boss in reprisal for a business deal that went awry. They say that when Wilkerson opened the package on July 17, 1980, and plugged the device into a wall socket, the bomb exploded.
The Mannings were accused after investigators said they found the couple’s fingerprints on the carton in which the bomb was mailed and on the tape that was used to seal it.
Another defendant in the case, millionaire West Los Angeles real estate broker William Ross, 57, allegedly was embroiled in a business dispute with Adams over her negotiations to buy his house. Prosecutors said Ross hired the Mannings, old associates from the Jewish Defense League, to mail the bomb to Adams.
Five years after Wilkerson’s death, Odeh was killed when he opened the door to his Santa Ana office and triggered an explosive booby-trap. That bombing, on Oct. 11, 1985, took place a day after Odeh had defended the Palestine Liberation Organization in a televised interview.
The Mannings, who have dual citizenship, moved to Israel several months after Odeh’s death. Rochelle Manning returned to the United States in June, 1988, and a few months later, she and her husband, who was still in Israel, were charged in Wilkerson’s murder.
In the waning months of 1988, Rochelle Manning and Ross went on trial in the Wilkerson case. In January, 1989, after the jury said it could not reach a verdict, both were released and Rochelle Manning returned to Israel.
The Mannings were arrested in Israel in March, 1991, after the United States requested their extradition for another trial in the Wilkerson case. The retrial of Ross is scheduled to begin Sept. 14.
Under the terms of U.S.-Israeli extradition treaties, suspects can be tried only in the cases for which they are extradited. Thus, the Mannings cannot be tried in the United States for the Odeh murder.
In Israel, Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, a neighbor of the Mannings in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, contended Monday that the Wilkerson murder case is all part of a larger conspiracy by the FBI and American intelligence agencies to learn what the couple knows about assassination attempts on Palestinian leaders in the United States.
“I am very sorry that our justice system does not want to point a finger at this plot,†Waldman said. “It is shocking and painful to see how our authorities are cooperating with the distortions of justice in the United States. . . . I think every Jew has a right to be tried in his homeland, and if there are suspicions against him, he should be tried here.â€
Yair Golan, the Mannings’ attorney, said he would ask Justice Minister David Libai not to order the extradition.
Parks reported from Jerusalem and Malnic from Los Angeles.
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