The astrophotographer lawyer
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The astrophotographer lawyer is the attorney John Kiriakou describes as representing the child abused by Ken Schaefer, a prisoner Kiriakou later feuded with at FCI Loretto.

Kiriakou identifies him only by profession and hobby: an A-list attorney from eastern Pennsylvania, hired by the boy, who came to the prison to interview Kiriakou in connection with the case.

The telescope

The lawyer was an amateur astrophotographer, with a camera he attached to a very high-powered telescope for photographing nebulae, planets and galaxies.

Across the street from his home in the Philadelphia suburbs was a Jewish school. One evening a school bus returning late from a day trip pulled up while the lawyer was in his front garden looking at the stars. The children ran over and asked whether they could look through his telescope. He showed them what he was observing, Jupiter with all of its moons, and Kiriakou says the children were excited enough that they all wanted to be astronomers.

The head of the school offered to repay the kindness: the school was going to Israel, and would love him to come as a chaperone, all expenses paid. The lawyer, who was himself Jewish and had never been to Israel, accepted.

The ministry

Once in Israel he received an invitation to meet the minister of education, and went to the ministry in Jerusalem, a sequence Kiriakou himself describes as a bizarre story.

The minister opened with the school's account of his kindness in showing the children the planets through his telescope, and then asked whether the state of Israel could ask one favour of him: make the case against Ken Schaefer go away.

The lawyer's reply, as Kiriakou relates it, was to say that they had lured him all the way to Israel, and to ask what kind of power Schaefer's family had. He then said he would die before he let the case go away, that Schaefer was a monster, and that the minister should have recognised he was a monster.

He cut the trip short and returned to Philadelphia. Kiriakou says the episode energised him to nail Schaefer to the wall.

The verdict

Schaefer was charged with two counts under the Mann Act and one count of what Kiriakou calls pederasty. One Mann Act count was thrown out; he was convicted on the remaining two and sentenced to 20 years.

The attempt to reach the case through Jerusalem followed an earlier flight there. Schaefer had jumped bail to Israel, which Kiriakou says does not extradite Jews, and was recovered only when the FBI advertised a fictitious children's ballet event in Cyprus that he travelled to attend.

See also

- Ken Schaefer
- Israeli non-extradition of Jews
- FCI Loretto
- John Kiriakou
