Little is being revealed about Jacob Ostreicher’s flight
from house arrest in Bolivia and into the care of actor-activist Sean Penn.
The New York businessman arrived in the U.S. on Monday after
an ordeal that began more than two years ago when he was detained as part of a
money laundering probe into a rice-growing venture. His Orthodox Jewish family,
associates in Bolivia and the State Department are all expressing a mixture of
relief and surprise, and not much else.
No one is saying how the 54-year-old fled, or who helped him.
“You’ll never find out,” Peter Hakim, president emeritus of
the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, said Tuesday. If the U.S. was
involved, “it was done through layers and layers of cover,” he said.
Penn, who last year traveled to La Paz and directly appealed
to President Evo Morales to free Ostreicher, said a “humanitarian operation”
had been mounted to extract the American “from the corrupt prosecution and
imprisonment he was suffering.” But his statement in an email to The Associated
Press gave no details on how that was done.
The State Department was equally circumspect, while family
members said they were being kept in the dark and hadn’t spoken with
Ostreicher.
Bolivia’s government was talking, its officials expressing
outrage and warning they could seek his extradition.
Analysts said the chances of bringing back Ostreicher are
slim. Noting he won media attention by denouncing from jail an extortion ring
that reached into high levels of the government, some speculated his flight
might have even enjoyed the government’s quiet consent. Bolivia had made no
inquiries about Ostreicher’s escape as of Tuesday, the State Department said.
His whereabouts weren’t known. In the email to the AP, Penn
said only that Ostreicher was safe, doing well and receiving medical attention
in the actor’s company at an undisclosed location.
Ostreicher spent 18 months in a Bolivian jail without
charge. He was held as a suspect in a money laundering investigation tied to
efforts to revive the rice business that he had entered into with a group of
Swiss investors. Ostreicher alleged the Colombian woman who was running the
venture skimmed investors’ money and had ties to a Brazilian drug trafficker.
His plight attracted international attention in 2011 as he
accused prosecutors of trying to extort tens of thousands of dollars from him
to let him go.
With U.S.-Bolivia relations strained since Morales expelled
the American ambassador in 2008, Penn was one of the few people Ostreicher
could turn to. The actor was a frequent guest of the late Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez and a sharp critic of U.S. foreign policy — two qualities that
endear him to Morales and other leftist leaders in Latin America.
After Penn intervened, Morales ordered a high-powered
investigation that exposed an extortion ring that preyed on people accused of
drug-related crimes. It led to the arrests of 15 people, include several
prosecutors and a legal adviser at the Interior Ministry.
Ostreicher was let out of jail in December 2012 but barred
from leaving Bolivia. A frustrated Penn vowed he wouldn’t abandon him.
“If it weren’t for Sean Penn I would be another statistic in
Bolivia and I would die in prison,” Ostreicher told the AP a year ago, after
previous efforts on his behalf by U.S. diplomats and lawmakers proved
fruitless.
Bolivian Justice Minister Cecilia Ayllon said Ostreicher
flew to Los Angeles from Peru’s capital, Lima.
She said the conditions of
Ostreicher’s house arrest had been relaxed, and he could easily have made a run
for it on one of his regular trips to La Paz to pick up kosher food sent by his
family. It’s only a short drive from Bolivia’s capital to the border with Peru.
Early on Monday, Ostreicher’s brother Aron contacted the AP
saying he hadn’t been heard from for a few days and the family feared he had
been abducted. Lawyers, associates and even the maid expressed similar
concerns, but he apparently was back in the U.S. by then.
All of them said they had no idea he was plotting to escape
and abandon his fight to recover the $50 million in farm machinery, cattle and
rice that he claimed corrupt officials stole from him.
“He’s a fighter,” Aron Ostreicher told the AP. “He kept on
saying: ‘Aron, you know me. I’m going for dignity. I want justice and I’m going
to get it.’”
More recently, though, as Hanukkah approached and the case
stalled, his physical and mental health deteriorated, family members said.
“He could have left a year ago,” said his former wife,
Miriam Ungar, who blames the long ordeal for ruining the marriage. “But I guess
he had to make himself ready to leave.”
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