A suspected double bomber on the FBI's most wanted list who vanished for 21 years is due in court this week to decide if he will be sent back to the United States to face trial.
The FBI believe Daniel Andreas San Diego has links to animal rights extremist groups and is their prime suspect for a series of bombings in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2003.
Former FBI agents have said there were missed opportunities to arrest the 47-year-old before he vanished and claim they found a suspected bomb-making factory in his abandoned car after what detectives called a 65-mile (104km) rush-hour chase in California.
Mr San Diego was found 5,000 miles (8,000km) away in a cottage in north Wales last year.
Mr San Diego, who had a $250,000 (£199,000) bounty on his head, faces a five-day extradition hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court in London on Monday to find out if the UK will hand him over to the United States to answer a federal arrest warrant.
The former fugitive, the first born-and-raised American on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list, has been indicted by US prosecutors for maliciously damaging and destroying by means of an explosive after two separate attacks in 2003.
Animal rights extremist group Revolutionary Cells - Animal Liberation Brigade claimed responsibility for the attacks on firms they believed had links with organisations that tested products on animals.
Former FBI Special Agent David Smith was part of a special operations group that had been watching Mr San Diego. He was remarkable by being unremarkable, Mr Smith said, portraying San Diego as an ordinary figure without apparent signs of violence.
Despite their efforts and hunting for years, the FBI lost track of Mr San Diego after he made an erratic escape from a surveillance operation in California.
The day before Mr San Diego went off the FBI's radar, Mr Smith was hiding in camouflage outside his home. Hours after Mr Smith and the FBI's surveillance specialists went off shift, he said Mr San Diego made a run for it with detectives in pursuit.
Eventually, he was arrested in November 2024 at a cottage in north Wales, where he lived under the alias Danny Webb, suggesting he had assistance in eluding capture for so long. Top FBI officials have since expressed both relief and frustration regarding the decade-long manhunt and the eventual discovery.
Mr San Diego was arrested after a long absence from law enforcement radar, and now faces an extradition hearing that could finally bring him back to face justice for his earlier crimes.
