German Kidnap Suspect Extradited by Argentina

Argentina on Friday extradited the suspected mastermind of Germany’s highest-paying kidnapping, sending him home to face charges after a two-year stay in an overcrowded Buenos Aires jail.

Argentine Interpol officers hustled the burly, balding Thomas Drach, 40, out of Caseros prison and into a patrol car before driving him to the airport for a Lufthansa flight to Germany.

Drach faces trial for the 1996 kidnapping of German tobacco heir Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who was held in chains for 33 days in the basement of a house in northern Germany. Drach faces between five and 15 years in prison if convicted.

Reemtsma was freed after his family paid a ransom of about $20 million, a record for Germany.

German police accompanied Drach on a Frankfurt-bound flight that left Buenos Aires’ Ezeiza airport at 5:10 p.m.

Drach was arrested in March 1998 in the ritzy Buenos Aires hotel room he was sharing with a Uruguayan girlfriend. They had driven to Argentina from Uruguay to attend a concert by the Rolling Stones.

Police were waiting for him after a bugged telephone conversation with a friend of the fugitive’s in the Netherlands revealed that Drach was on his way to Buenos Aires for a concert by a “famous rock group.”

Argentine police guessed that he meant the Rolling Stones and were ready to stake out the River Plate soccer stadium where the British band was due to perform. But Drach was caught before making it to the show.

Drach fought extradition for two years and, as late as Friday morning, his Argentine lawyer still hoped that a last-ditch appeal against the decree by President Fernando de la Rua authorizing the extradition would delay his departure.

Caseros prison is a far cry from the luxury to which the Cologne-born playboy Drach had become accustomed in his travels around the world under false names.

Built in a densely populated part of Buenos Aires, the prison holds inmates who shout obscenities at passers-by from cell windows or from holes they have smashed in the walls of the dilapidated, multistory building. Violent uprisings are a recurring problem.

Drach was held in a special “VIP” wing for famous or vulnerable detainees.

The Argentine government dropped charges against Drach of entering the country with a false document so he could be extradited to face the more serious charges in Germany.

He had checked in to the hotel using a British passport with a false name.

Two kidnappers were arrested in Spain after Reemtsma’s release in April 1996 and were jailed.

At the time of Drach’s arrest, police said they believed that he had visited the United States, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Bulgaria and Hungary.