The deportation of Phillip John Smith from Brazil could be gaining some momentum with a federal attorney there now assessing the case against the convicted murderer and sex offender.
Phillip John Smith being taken into custody at the Maravilhosa Hostel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photo: TV Bandeirantes
Applications were being made to the Federal Court today to speed up returning him to New Zealand.
Brazilian journalist Alexandre Tortoriello said the federal attorney was likely to request an urgent deportation.
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He said it could happen as-early-as the weekend, but for some reason there appeared to be a bureaucratic slowdown of the process.
"It's quite unusual a deportation takes so long here in Brazil, it's also a peculiar case when a pedophile and murderer who escaped another country."
Smith was taken into custody in Rio de Janeiro on 13 November after fleeing New Zealand while on temporary release from the Spring Hill prison in Waikato.
He used a passport issued in his birth name Phillip Traynor to get on a flight to Chile, from where he went to Brazil.
Smith was jailed in 1996 for stabbing to death the father of a boy he had been convicted of sexually assaulting.