Robert Manning made his initial appearance in a U.S. federal courtroom Monday to face charges that he sent a mail bomb 13 years ago that killed the secretary of a Los Angeles computer firm.
Manning was flown from Israel to Los Angeles on Sunday, following two years of legal appeals in Israel to prevent his extradition to the United States.
The American-born resident of the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba did not enter a formal plea to the charge of "mailing an explosive device with intent to kill."
However, his attorney, Richard Sherman, said that Manning will plead not guilty.
Manning seemed relaxed and cheerful during his brief court appearance, wearing a black yarmulka and blue shirt and pants.
Federal authorities have also identified Manning as a suspect in a 1985 bombing that killed a local Arab-American activist, Alex Odeh, as well as in three other bombings on the East Coast, involving an Arab-American group and two alleged Nazis.
"What this is all about is they (the prosecutors) want to punish him for Odeh," defense attorney Richard Sherman told the Los Angeles Times.
"But they can’t make a case on Odeh, so they charged him with this," Sherman said
Under the terms of the extradition agreement between Israel and the United States, Manning cannot be tried for the killing by bomb of Odeh or other bombings.
BOBBY PINS COULD BE WEAPONS
Sherman said his client has been allowed to wear his yarmulka and tallit in jail and to receive kosher food, a concern that Manning and his supporters raised repeatedly in Israel as argument against his extradition.
But Manning told a local rabbi that he had been kept apart from other prisoners at the detention center, on grounds that the bobby pins he uses to fasten the yarmulka to his head might be used as weapons by other prisoners.
The charges against Manning stem from a 1980 incident in which a booby-trapped device was mailed to a local computer firm. The company’s secretary. Patricia Wilkerson, 32, opened the package and, following attached instructions, plugged the device into an electrical outlet.
The device exploded, killing Wilkerson.
Authorities allege that Manning’s fingerprints were found on the parcel and the fingerprints of his wife, Rochelle, on the letter of instructions.
The intended target, say authorities, was the secretary’s employer, who was embroiled in a business dispute with a man befriended by the Mannings at meetings of the Jewish Defense League.
In 1989, Rochelle Manning was tried in Los Angeles in the same matter, but was released after the jury deadlocked. She remains in Kiryat Arba while American officials seek her extradition to the United States for a retrial.
Robert Manning, meanwhile, remains in jail pending a hearing on whether he should be released on bail.
The Mannings immigrated to Israel in 1973 but returned frequently to the United States.
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