That wasn't the first time that France, which yesterday freed convicted murderer Ira Einhorn rather than send him back to the United States, used extra-legal methods to nail a fugitive.

And France isn't alone. Israel has done it. So has the United States, on more than one occasion.
What's more, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992 ruled that it is OK for the federal government to kidnap fugitives and return them to this country for trial.

Could that happen to Einhorn, who was allowed to return to the home he shares with his Swedish companion, Annika Flodin, near Champagne-Mouton in the south of France?

Not likely, said the few officials willing to discuss the matter.

"I've got the guys who could do it," said a high-ranking member of the Philadelphia Police Department. "I wouldn't have to look far for volunteers, either. Just give them the plane tickets and they'd bring Einhorn back. But really, this is a matter for the [ federal ] government."

And even though District Attorney Lynne Abraham said she was "incensed, offended, outraged" by France's refusal to extradite Einhorn, another law enforcement official noted that the cases in which extra-legal steps were taken to nab fugitives all involved matters of national interest.

For example, the Drug Enforcement Administration has admitted paying $20,000 to unnamed Mexicans for the "rental" of an airplane used to bring Dr. Humberto Alvarez from Guadalajara to El Paso after he had been kidnapped in 1990.

Alvarez, who ultimately was acquitted, was a suspect in the 1985 torture-murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena. Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, Alvarez appealed his arrest to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled on June 15, 1992, that even though the kidnapping might be "shocking" and a "violation of general international law principles," it nevertheless was consistent with a 111-year-old high court ruling permitting such action.

In addition to kidnapping the Jackal, French officials went outside legal channels in 1983, when they pressured Bolivia into expelling Klaus Barbie. Barbie was a one-time Gestapo leader who rounded up hundreds of French Jews in the Lyon area during World War II and shipped them to death camps.

Nazi hunters tracked Barbie to Bolivia, with which France had no extradition treaty, and Bolivia was induced to expel the Nazi, putting him on a plane to France. Subsequently, France announced it would provide Bolivia with economic aid.

In perhaps the most famous case of fugitive-kidnapping, Israeli intelligence agents scooped up Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentine, in 1960, and hustled him to Israel.

Eichmann, responsible for organizing the transportation system that carried 6 million Jews to their deaths, was convicted and executed in 1962.