A Navy veteran says his life is in danger after claiming he tried to help North Korean diplomats defect by staging a fake kidnapping.
Christopher Ahn described in a “60 Minutes” interview with Sharyn Alfonsi on Sunday that the Spanish government is now trying to extradite him following the incident.
Ahn said he is part of the Cheollima Civil Defense, a secret activist group that hopes to overthrow the North Korean government.
“Of course it sounds crazy,” he said, describing how a North Korean diplomat at the Spanish embassy contacted the group to help them defect.
Their mission: fake a kidnapping to allow the diplomats enough cover to leave. Everything was fine, then the police showed up.
“The color on everyone’s face just [turned] to lily white,” he said.
The acting ambassador told Spanish police that Ahn’s group tied up and beat officials during the kidnapping, which he denied. Now the Spanish government is trying to extradite him and he has already spent almost three months behind bars.
“The FBI told me that my life is in danger. That the North Korean government is now, and will be, targeting me for assassination,” he said.
Ahn’s lawyer told “60 Minutes” that they tried to get the Justice Department or President Biden to intervene on his behalf and stop any extradition.
He added that he previously helped Kim Han Sol, nephew of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, escape the country and go into hiding after his father was assassinated in Malaysia in 2017.
North Korea “was publicly embarrassed by what happened in Spain. They were publicly embarrassed that I helped rescue Han Sol,” Ahn said. “So why wouldn’t I believe the FBI when they told me that North Korea is trying to kill me?”
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