FBI Most Wanted fugitive bomber faces UK extradition after 21 years on the run

Dubai: A suspected double bomber who vanished for 21 years is due in court this week to decide if he will be extradited to the United States to face trial, according to BBC.

Daniel Andreas San Diego, 47, is accused of planting two bombs in California in 2003 and was the first American-born suspect placed on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list. He is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London for a five-day extradition hearing.

San Diego, linked by investigators to animal rights extremist groups, had a $250,000 bounty on his head. He was detained last November in north Wales, where he had been living under the alias Danny Webb in a remote cottage in the Conwy valley. UK’s National Crime Agency and counter-terror police carried out the raid.

Former FBI agents say there were “missed opportunities” to arrest him before he fled. Surveillance experts David Smith and Clyde Foreman recalled that in 2003 the FBI believed San Diego was their prime suspect but delayed an arrest to gather intelligence on possible accomplices.

“He was remarkable by being unremarkable,” said Smith. “Nothing suggested he was about to turn violent.” But in September 2003, just weeks after two bombings rocked biotech and nutritional firms in the San Francisco Bay Area, he slipped away during a 65-mile rush-hour chase.

The FBI said one bomb targeted first responders by detonating after the initial blast in Emeryville on August 28. A second device packed with nails exploded at a Pleasanton nutrition company on September 26. No one was injured, but the sophistication raised fears of escalating violence.

San Diego drove erratically during the chase, weaving through commuters and toll bridges. As agents lost visibility in heavy fog, he abandoned his car in downtown San Francisco, engine still running, near a subway station, the BBC report said.

When investigators examined the vehicle, they discovered a suspected “bomb-making lab” in the trunk. “It was everything you ever wanted,” Smith recalled. “Had we known that, he’d have been arrested days earlier.”

The FBI indicted San Diego in 2004 on charges of maliciously damaging and destroying property with explosives. They considered him armed and dangerous, but leads soon dried up. Agents monitored his family and friends, believing he might have fled to Central or South America, but the trail went cold.

San Diego, a computer network specialist from Berkeley, California, had grown up in a middle-class family. Despite years of pursuit, he remained elusive until last year, when UK authorities discovered him living quietly in rural Wales, according to the report.

Foreman, a former FBI special agent, believes he had outside help. “He was not a skilled intelligence officer. He had to have support,” he said.

San Diego now faces the prospect of being returned to the US to stand trial for the 2003 bombings, which prosecutors say were carried out by animal rights extremists targeting companies linked to animal testing.

For the FBI, his reappearance after two decades revives one of its most frustrating manhunts. “It was definitely a missed opportunity,” Smith admitted. “But now there’s a chance for justice.”