Factory owner
ruled flight risk

Kil Soo Lee is accused of abusing
workers in American Samoa

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By Jean Christensen
Associated Press

A federal magistrate rejected yesterday a bid by the former owner of an American Samoan factory to move to a Honolulu halfway house to await trial on charges of worker abuse.

Magistrate Barry Kurren ruled Kil Soo Lee is a flight risk. The South Korean national is accused of forcing his workers into servitude and subjecting some to beatings and starvings at the now-closed Daewoosa Samoa Inc. garment factory in Tafuna.

Most of the factory's 250 workers were women from Vietnam.

Lee, 51, has been held without bail at Oahu Community Correctional Center since the FBI arrested him in March in American Samoa, a U.S. territory 2,300 miles south of Hawaii.

He has pleaded innocent and is scheduled for trial Sept. 25.

Lee's public defender, Alexander Silvert, asked Kurren yesterday to allow Lee to move to the Miller Hale halfway house, saying Lee is not a danger to the community and has ties to the United States that show he is not a flight risk.

But Silvert said Kurren rejected the argument that Lee's ties to American Samoa can be considered ties to the United States for the purposes of determining detention.

Silvert said he may ask the trial judge, Susan Oki Mollway, to review that determination or may try to find more bond security to allay the magistrate's concern that Lee is a flight risk.

Lee also has asked that his case be dismissed on grounds that the U.S. district court in Hawaii does not have jurisdiction. Silvert said Lee has a constitutional right to stand trial in American Samoa, where the alleged crimes occurred.

Unlike other U.S. territories, American Samoa does not have its own U.S. district court. The motion for dismissal says federal law provides for the High Court of American Samoa to be the first to hear cases involving alleged crimes within the territory.

Prosecutors, however, say a territorial court is not the proper body to decide a federal case.

A hearing on the dismissal request is tentatively set for Aug. 27.