U.S. authorities have located international fugitive Kyung Ho Song in his native South Korea, more than a decade after he fled Illinois to avoid being tried for drunken driving and reckless homicide in an accident that killed a 43-year-old single mother.

The search for Song was reactivated last spring after the Chicago Tribune contacted prosecutors and police about the dormant case. Even though U.S. authorities discovered Song’s location in December, they have yet to formally request help from South Korean officials, and it is not clear when or if Song might be extradited back to Illinois.

His case provides another glimpse into the gaps and lack of coordination in the criminal justice system that allow border-crossing fugitives to avoid prosecution.

Law enforcement officials would not comment on why there was no progress in the case for so many years, but one official suggested that it languished because of a lack of communication among the police, county prosecutors, federal agents and Justice Department officials. All played some role in pursuing Song, but none seemed to take stewardship of the extradition effort and push the case.

The Tribune's “Fugitives From Justice” series, an examination of more than 200 international fugitives cases from northern Illinois and thousands more nationwide, spotlighted Song's case in November. Tribune reporters then teamed up with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to try to locate Song. 

Independent of authorities, Tribune and ICIJ reporters in recent weeks found Song in a glass and concrete high-rise apartment in Yongin, a quiet residential suburb about an hour and half’s drive from the capital city of Seoul.

During four interviews, the once-prosperous shoe store owner, who is now 73, bemoaned how his life had unraveled since his flight.

“I am such an unlucky guy,” Song said.

After an International Consortium of Investigative Journalists expose about paramilitaries involvement in the coltan trade, Colombia is moving to curb illegal mining of the highly sought after mineral.

Juan Manuel Santos, the president of Colombia, travelled to the lawless southeastern corner of the country last weekend and declared his intention to designate the coltan-rich region a “strategic reserve, for national security reasons.”

The mining industry there is currently controlled by what Mines and Energy Minister Mauricio Cárdenas called “shady interests” in a tweet on March 11. A ministry official said Monday that the government eventually hopes to auction off mining permits to legitimate companies, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The groups Cárdenas was alluding to are right-wing paramilitaries and rebels-turned-drug dealers in the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, the FARC. As ICIJ reported earlier this month, those armed groups have coerced the native Indians who live in the region to work the mines or bought their labor with free beer, food, and brand-name athletic shoes. He said that these groups are “a national security concern for us.”

The heavy, black, conductive mineral is used in everything from sophisticated personal electronics to precision weapons. It is used to improve the ability of microchip processors to function in extremely hot or cold temperatures.

Unlike diamonds, the origins of which can be determined via geo-fingerprinting, there is no accurate test to trace coltan. This has made it an attractive new source of revenue for narco-terrorist groups like the FARC.

Accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old Chicago girl, the Rev. Sleeva Raju Policetti fled Illinois nearly a decade ago to his native India, where the Roman Catholic archbishop of Hyderabad soon issued an order barring him from ministry.

In 2008, after a canonical trial, the Vatican took the rare and severe step of defrocking Policetti over the allegations, meaning he is no longer a priest.

But civil justice never caught up to the fugitive ex-priest, whose lawyers in India have fought efforts to extradite him to Chicago to face 20 felony counts of criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse.

And now it's apparently too late.

In recent days, Policetti's case took a dramatic turn when an attorney for Policetti's alleged victim indicated to Cook County prosecutors that she was no longer willing to pursue charges — a decision that would effectively force prosecutors to dismiss the case and abandon the years-long extradition effort.

Prosecutors are now trying to set up a face-to-face meeting with the alleged victim, said Sally Daly, spokeswoman for the Cook County state's attorney's office. “Proving up this case would very much involve us having the victim willing to participate in the prosecution,” Daly said. “Obviously, things have changed; she's an adult now. We respect the wishes of the victim, same as you. At the end of the day, that's what matters most.”

The potential end to Policetti's prosecution offers yet another example of how an opaque and slow-moving international extradition system can derail justice, leaving suspects accused of murder, rape and crimes against children free when they find haven in foreign countries.

Policetti's alleged victim initially worked with authorities, setting in motion an international extradition that required the approval of top officials from the U.S. State and Justice departments and India's Ministry of External Affairs.

On a narrow trail muddied by rain, a slight man in a thin T-shirt emerges from the thick of a remote jungle, down where Colombia ends and Venezuela and Brazil begin. He’s striding quickly, despite nearly 50 pounds of rocks inside a woven basket, anchored to his back by a white cloth wrapped around his forehead.

“Yes, I’m coming from the mine,” the man says, the weight of the basket preventing him from looking up at strangers he’s encountered on the trail, inside Puinawai National Park. He’s part of a local Indian tribe and is moving precious ore in the same palm-frond baskets his ancestors once weaved to bring prey home from a hunt.

The miner has little time to talk; the drop-off point for his ore is still miles away, outside the park.

Closer to the mine, near a stream, men briskly shovel muddy mounds of small rocks onto screens, then pour water over them to expose what they hope are pebbles containing tungsten or coltan. And at the mine itself, men, women and small children dig holes and sift through mud in search of ore.

This is an illegal mine, on a plot of land stripped of trees and surrounded by pristine jungle.

The work here goes on well out of the view of Colombian police patrols looking for traffickers moving contraband ore containing valuable minerals like coltan and tungsten.

“We are seeing the emergence of illegal groups engaged in mining activities, especially in rare-earth [minerals] in the eastern part of Colombia, very distant and remote areas in which mining is illegal,” said Mauricio Cárdenas, chief of Colombia’s Mining Ministry. These groups are “a national security concern for us.”

It’s proof, he said, that a black market for valuable metals and rare-earth minerals is growing in territory the Colombian government has historically found difficult to police. Not only is this mine inside a national preserve, but it’s tucked in a corner of Colombia infamous for drug smugglers and armed paramilitaries.

Crouched near a mound of rocks and dirt, Ramón swings a short-handled pick at a shallow hole, showing off the technique he uses to mine what he calls “black pebbles” — stones laced with minerals important to high-tech manufacturers worldwide.

Over the last couple of years Ramón has labored at small, out-of-the-way mines, walking up to a week to reach claims he’s staked out deep in southwest Venezuela’s Amazon jungle, near the country’s border with Colombia.

It’s worth the backaches and sweat, Ramón said, rolling a near-black rock in the palm of his hand. He said he earns good money supplying brokers with stones that hold coltan ore.

Applied to microchips, the metal enables electronic capacitors to perform superbly in an array of devices, like smart phones in the pockets of more and more consumers. Refined into a powder and applied to solar panels, coltan increases energy efficiency.

And as a strategic mineral, Coltan carries weight because it allows guidance controls in smart bombs to work in extreme climate conditions. Because of that, Venezuelan coltan has raised concerns in Washington, D.C., as the government of President Hugo Chávez has selected Iranian, Chinese and Russian firms to explore minerals and is looking to develop future supplies of different ores.

Today it is illegal to mine coltan in Venezuela. But thanks to the likes of Ramón, Venezuelan coltan is already coming on to the international minerals market — as black-market contraband.

In government documents in several countries, police and military reports and interviews with miners and residents in South America’s northern Amazon jungles, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found a robust, illicit trade in coltan and growing risk for small-scale miners chasing ore.

That smart phone in your pocket contains a bit of coltan — a prized mineral that helps move electronic signals across ubiquitous microchips and controllers and allows devices to work well in extreme temperatures. And coltan is a strategic mineral because it's important for controls on smart bombs, for example.

But coltan is also a conflict mineral, with large supplies coming from parts of Central Africa controlled by warring factions and criminal organizations that employ small-scale miners in terrible conditions, or charge them taxes to operate their claims.

For several months, ICIJ reporters in six countries combed government and court records and interviewed mining experts and brokers. The reporters also followed miners as they prospected for coltan in South America’s Amazon, in the border between Venezuela and Colombia, where they face cross-border smugglers and must deal with violent drug traffickers and paramilitaries — conditions similar to those in Central Africa.

Lack of regulation, transparency and security make this area a new source of conflict minerals, experts say, and one in which an array of human rights abuses is already taking place.

The Team:

Reporters: Emilia Diaz-Struck and Joseph Polizsuk (Venezuela);  Ignacio Gómez (Colombia); Marcelo Soares (Brazil); Nari Kim (South Korea)

Project manager: Ricardo Sandoval

Editors: Ricardo Sandoval and Gerard Ryle

Media Partners: El Universal (Venezuela), Arman-do.info (Venezuela), Noticias Uno (Colombia), El Espectador (Colombia)