After that, Italian authorities arrested him on charges he assaulted officers on board a refugee ship bound for Italy, and was there until his extradition on the U.S. indictment.
Police in New York pulled him off his Paris-bound flight and charged him with sexually assaulting a hotel chambermaid. (The charges were later dropped, and prosecutors said they doubted the maid's reliability.) An aide phoned Ms. Merkel at her central-Berlin home that Saturday and told her the news.