Israeli non-extradition of Jews is a rule John Kiriakou describes as absolute: Israel will not extradite a Jewish fugitive to another country, whatever the offence. “You can be a mass murderer, a serial killer. You can be a pedophile. You can be the most notorious pedophile in the world. They’re not extraditing you because they don’t extradite Jews.”[1]
The Philadelphia attorney
Kiriakou illustrates the rule with a case he encountered through the federal prison system. A prominent Philadelphia attorney — Harvard Law School, lead mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer at an American firm in Moscow — molested a boy from the age of twelve to fifteen. When the boy filed a civil suit against him, he fled to Israel.[2][1]
The Cyprus ballet sting
The man was a great lover of the ballet, and the boy he had abused was a ballet prodigy in Moscow. Interpol took out advertisements in Israeli newspapers announcing a one-night-only performance in Cyprus featuring the greatest child ballerinas from Russia. Cyprus is roughly forty minutes’ flight from Israel. He boarded a plane to see a ballet that did not exist, was seized on arrival, extradited to the United States, and sentenced to twenty years. Kiriakou calls the operation “brilliant.”[3][4]
The Epstein question
Kiriakou uses the rule to pose a question about Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein owned multiple private jets and had billions hidden around the world; if the refuge was available, “why in the world would I not flee to Israel?” The only explanation Kiriakou can construct is that Epstein believed he was safe — that he held so much material on so many important people that nobody would dare move against him. “And then they did.”[5]
Context: where sex offenders are held
In the same account Kiriakou notes that almost all sex offenders in the federal system are held in low-security prisons: maximum and medium institutions are too dangerous for them, and from minimum-security camps they would simply walk away.[2]