Former Agriprocessors Supervisors Still 'Hiding' In Israel

Israeli officials say they would be glad to hand over two former Iowa meatpacking supervisors - if U.S. officials could determine where in Israel the men are 'hiding' to avoid felony charges.

Postville plant supervisors still on the lam 
BY TONY LEYS • Des Moines Register

Israeli officials say they would be glad to hand over two former Iowa meatpacking supervisors - if U.S. officials could determine where in Israel the men are hiding to avoid felony charges.

The men, Hosam Amara, 45, and Zeev Levi, 51, are former chicken-line supervisors at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville.

They allegedly fled to Israel shortly after a massive immigration raid at the plant in May 2008. They both face federal felony charges of conspiring to harbor illegal immigrants for financial gain and conspiring to obtain false immigration papers for the workers.

Former Agriprocessors laborers have said Amara was a harsh supervisor responsible for many of the worker abuses that made headlines after the raid. For example, they said, he demanded bribes or forced them to buy overpriced cars from him to obtain jobs or assignment to day shifts.

How is it possible that Amara and Levi could find refuge for nearly two years in Israel, one of the United States' closest allies?

Orli Gil, Israel's consul general in Chicago, said she doubts the holdup is due to any foot-dragging by her government.

She said her country would be willing to extradite the fugitives to the United States if they are found. A spokeswoman for her office said it generally would be the United States' responsibility to figure out exactly where the men are.

Gil said her country changed its extradition laws in the 1990s to make it easier for fugitives to be sent to the United States or other allied countries. The process is straightforward, she said, but "like anywhere else, if you have a good attorney, he can drag out the time."

Robert Teig, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Cedar Rapids, declined to say what steps U.S. officials have taken to catch Amara and Levi.

"There is nothing public on what the government is doing, so I can't get into those details," he said. "All I can say is the warrants for those two gentlemen are still outstanding, and there are efforts being made by the government."

Teig noted that federal prosecutors wrote in a federal appeals court filing in December that Amara was in Israel "pending extradition." Teig declined to say whether that meant Amara had been captured.

Gil said Tuesday that she would check, but she was not immediately able to determine whether Amara was in custody.

Prosecutors have said they had clues about where Amara went. During legal proceedings against Sholom Rubashkin, Agriprocessors' former top executive, they alleged that he gave Amara $4,000 for plane tickets shortly after the 2008 raid "and told him it would be better if he just left and forgot about what happened at Agriprocessors." Prosecutors indicated law officers had monitored phone calls Amara made from Israel to people in Iowa.

Authorities also indicated they know where Levi went. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has a "Most Wanted" poster on its Web site saying he had been living in Nahariya, a small city on the Mediterranean coast in northern Israel.

Teig, the federal prosecutors' spokesman, said Amara is alleged to be a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, and Levi is a citizen of Israel.

Gil, the Israeli consul general, said their citizenship would not affect their extradition proceedings.

Amos Guiora, a University of Utah law professor who has written about Israeli law, said Israel generally has cooperated with U.S. extradition requests, especially in recent years.

"Why should we be the haven for a lawbreaker?" said Guiora, who holds dual citizenship in the United States and Israel. He said the value of extradition became cemented in Israeli minds in the 1990s, when the country sent several mobsters back to Russia, from which they had emigrated.

Paul Rael, a lay minister at St. Bridget's Catholic Church in Postville, expressed skepticism about federal officials' efforts to find the fugitives. "They're not even trying," he said.

Rael said people in town have told him their children are communicating via Facebook with the children of Levi and Amara in Israel. If the Postville kids can find the two families, he said, surely investigators could find them, too.

Amara and Levi likely would face prison time if they were returned to the United States and convicted.

More than 200 former laborers at the Postville plant served five-month prison sentences after pleading guilty to less serious immigration charges than Amara and Levi face. Most of them then were deported, mainly to Guatemala or Mexico.

Several former supervisors have pleaded guilty in the case, and most of them have been sentenced to prison or probation. Rubashkin, the former top executive at the plant, was convicted of 86 counts of financial fraud. He could face many years behind bars when he is sentenced, probably this spring.