Feds urge
sweatshop trial
stay in isles

Accused owner Kil Soo Lee
wants the case to be heard
in American Samoa

---

By Jean Christensen
Associated Press

The U.S. government is urging a judge to reject arguments that Hawaii's federal court is not the proper body for a case involving an American Samoa factory owner accused of running a sweatshop.

Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Hawaii filed a motion this week opposing Kil Soo Lee's request that his case be dismissed on jurisdictional grounds.

The South Korean national is accused of underpaying and abusing workers at his now-closed Daewoosa Samoa factory.

He faces federal charges of involuntary servitude and forced labor for allegedly preventing nine workers from quitting their jobs or leaving the factory's gated compound in Tafuna.

The factory, which made clothing for J.C. Penney Co. and other retailers, employed about 250 workers, mostly women from Vietnam.

J.C. Penney stopped selling the factory's clothes in December, when a U.S. Labor Department report said workers were fed meager rations of rice, watery broth and cabbage and many resembled "walking skeletons."

The FBI arrested Lee in March in the U.S. territory 2,300 miles south of Hawaii. He is being held at Oahu Community Correctional Center pending his scheduled Sept. 25 trial in U.S. District Court in Honolulu.

In a motion filed last month, Lee's public defender, Alexander Silvert, said Lee has a constitutional right to stand trial in American Samoa, where the alleged crimes occurred.

But unlike the U.S. territory of Guam and the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, American Samoa does not have its own U.S. District Court. Lee's motion argues federal law provides for the High Court of American Samoa to be the first to hear cases of alleged crimes in the territory, if it chooses.

The motion filed by government attorneys Monday said Congress has not granted the High Court the power to hear federal criminal cases. It added that court rulings have continually supported the principle that federal defendants are to be tried in the district to which they were first brought when they were arrested -- in Lee's case, Hawaii.

The government motion also refuted Lee's earlier argument that his arrest by FBI agents amounted to "kidnapping" because Lee was brought to Hawaii without the prior notification of the American Samoan government. Lee's attorney had said that notification is required by federally sanctioned territorial extradition rules.

Because federal law is supreme over that of states and territories, "The existence of extradition provisions in local statutes is of no consequence," the motion said.

Lee's motion for dismissal is scheduled to be heard Monday.