American fugitive captured after 41 years on the run

George Wright, who is 68, was arrested by Portuguese police on Monday after being tracked down to a town outside Lisbon by US authorities. He was reported to have been living under the alias Jose Luis Jorge Dos Santos, according to the United States Marshals Service.

His offences include escaping from a New Jersey prison in 1970 and allegedly hijacking a plane in the United States two years later.

Wright’s criminal career began in 1962, when he was involved in a number of armed robberies. He was convicted of the murder of a petrol station owner in 1963 during an armed robbery in Wall, New Jersey.

He managed to escape from New Jersey’s Bayside State Prison in 1970 with three other men, while serving his 15 to 30 year prison sentence. He then joined the Black Liberation Army, a black nationalist militant group, according to the FBI.

In 1972, he was among five hijackers who took over a Delta flight from Detroit to Miami, which had three small children on board, the FBI says.

The hijackers demanded a $1m ransom when they landed in Miami, the largest ransom of its kind at that time, and demanded that FBI agents deliver the money wearing only swimsuits, so that weapons could not be concealed.

They flew the plane to Algeria, hoping to seek asylum. Algerian authorities returned the plane and the money to the United States, but released the hijackers after a few days. The other four hijackers were captured in France in 1976, but Wright remained missing.

Wright is being held without bail by Portuguese authorities and faces extradition to the United States to serve the remainder of his sentence for his murder conviction.