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UNITED STATES: INMATE DENIED TRANSFER TO FRANCE November 21, 2006
Zainab Osman
(SomaliNet) The Arizona Department of Corrections (DOC) has reneged on a deal to transfer a French woman serving a sentence for killing her husband after learning that France might release her on parole.
Valerie Pape, 54, was released from the Arizona State Prison on Nov. 7 and placed in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service. She arrived Friday at the federal transfer center in Oklahoma City, where she would be housed until her flight to France.
The transfer was done under an international treaty that allows for prisoner exchanges between nations.
Arizona Department of Corrections executive director Dora Schriro approved the transfer along with the U.S. Department of Justice, according to prison records.
But Schriro changed her mind Monday after the daughters of the victim voiced their concerns about the uncertainty of how the sentence would be served in France. Pape, a Scottsdale hairdresser, pleaded guilty in 2002 to second-degree murder in the death of 60-year-old Ira Pomerantz, whose headless and legless torso was found in a trash container behind a Mesa grocery store in January 2000.
Pape admitted to shooting Pomerantz during a fight, but has said nothing about how he was dismembered or where the remains are. She was sentenced to 16 years in prison with no parole. But Arizona authorities said France would have been free to release Pape on parole once she was in that country.