Fugitive Black Panther socialised with US envoy in Guinea-Bissau

Convicted killer George Wright went undetected while living under his real name in Africa, former US ambassador says
George Wright, US fugitive, in Portugal, 2000
George Wright pictured in 2000 in Praia das Maçãs, Portugal. The convict had links with the Black Liberation Army after escaping jail in 1970. Photograph: AP

An American fugitive, who hijacked a plane in the 1970s, lived openly in Guinea-Bissau during the 1980s under his real name, a retired US ambassador to the African nation claims.

The former ambassador, John Blacken, said the embassy knew of George Wright, who was captured this week in Portugal, but had not known he was a fugitive.

Blacken said he remembered meeting Wright socially in Guinea-Bissau. He added that embassy officials would have taken action if they had known the man had been an escaped convict.

"If we had received such a cable, we would have responded," said Blacken, who said he was stunned upon hearing the news of Wright's detention on Monday in Portugal.

Wright was convicted of the 1962 murder of Walter Patterson, owner of a petrol station in New Jersey. Eight years into his prison term, on 19 August 1970, Wright and three other men escaped from Bayside state prison in Leesburg, New Jersey. While on the run Wright joined the underground militant group the Black Liberation Army and lived in a communal family with them in Detroit, the FBI said.

In 1972, dressed as a priest and using an alias, Wright hijacked a Delta flight from Detroit to Miami, along with four other Black Liberation Army members. The hijackers identified themselves as a Black Panther group to passengers, police said. After releasing the plane's 86 passengers in exchange for a $1m ransom, the hijackers forced the plane to fly to Boston, then to Algeria, where they gained asylum.

At the request of the US government, Algerian officials returned the plane and the money to the US, briefly detaining the hijackers before allowing them to stay. The group left Algeria, possibly late in 1972, and settled in France, according to Mikhael Ganouna, producer of the 2010 documentary Nobody Knows my Name.

Members of the group were convicted in Paris in 1976. Wright remained at large but his case became a top priority when a New Jersey fugitive taskforce was formed in 2002.

Until his arrest on 26 September by the Portuguese authorities and at the request of the US government, Wright had been living in Almocageme, 28 miles west of Lisbon. He had worked in various jobs, most recently as a nightclub bouncer, according to neighbours. There was a sudden breakthrough in the case last week when police matched his fingerprint to a resident ID card.

Wright, 68, is now being held in Lisbon, pending US extradition hearings. If an extradition request were granted, he could appeal against it to Portugal's supreme court and then to the constitutional court, a process likely to last months.

The fugitive has lived in Portugal for at least 20 years but a photocopy of his Portuguese residency card listed his home country as Guinea-Bissau. While living in the former Portuguese colony Wright used his own name.

Blacken, who was US ambassador to Guinea-Bissau from 1986 to 1989, said: "All this was a big surprise, my goodness, murder and everything else. No one imagined him being a murderer – of course we didn't know him that well. He seemed like an ordinary person, not radical at all."

Blacken could not recall what sort of work Wright did in Guinea-Bisseau. He said he remembered his Portuguese wife better because she had worked as a translator for either the US embassy or for a Guinea-Bissau trade and investment project that started up in 1993. "He was known as George Wright here, and it's strange that [US officials] never tracked him down here," Blacken said.

The Guinea-Bissau embassy in Lisbon said no one was available to comment on whether Wright had got citizenship from the African nation.

Blacken said it probably would not have been hard for Wright to have obtained citizenship in Guinea-Bissau. "A person living here for over a period of time who wants to apply for citizenship can normally get it regardless of his background."