Feds: Accused mink raider from Mercer Island hid with friends in Santa Cruz

MADISON, Wis. — Animal-rights activists in northern California helped a Mercer Island man accused of releasing thousands of mink from Midwestern farms dodge authorities for the last few years, federal investigators believe.

Peter Daniel Young rented an apartment under a false name, used another activist's credit card and appears to have run a mail-order CD business over his computer while he was on the lam, according to search warrant applications recently unsealed in the U.S. District Court of Northern California.

"I have probable cause to believe that one or more individuals ... have in some manner assisted Young in remaining concealed from arrest," Scott Merriam, an agent in the FBI's San Francisco office, wrote in the applications.

Young, captured in March after seven years on the run, faces two federal counts of animal enterprise terrorism in Wisconsin. The decision on whether to bring more charges in his case rests with federal prosecutors in San Francisco since Young and his friends apparently were living in that jurisdiction.

Elise Becker, the assistant U.S. attorney working the case in California, didn't return messages from The Associated Press. Young's attorney here, Chris Kelly, downplayed the documents.

"I'm not sure most of it has any real significance to the charges Peter is facing here" in Wisconsin, he said. "The information in the warrant is just a bunch of allegations. They haven't been proved."

He declined to comment on Young's activities before he was captured.

"As far as I know, he was just living his life," Kelly said.

Federal prosecutors believe Young and Justin Samuel broke onto farms in Wisconsin, South Dakota and Iowa in 1997 and freed 7,000 mink on behalf of the Animal Liberation Front. ALF is an umbrella for groups of animal-rights activists working against industries they feel injure animals.

They both were originally indicted in Madison in 1998 on four counts of interfering with interstate commerce by extortion and two counts of animal enterprise terrorism.

Federal prosecutors dropped the extortion counts against Young, 27, last week after they decided a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling invalidated the charges' legal foundation.

Young still faces trial this fall on the two animal enterprise-terrorism counts.

Young and Samuel disappeared after the indictment came down. Police caught up with Samuel in Belgium in 1999. He struck a deal with prosecutors and served two years in prison.

Young stayed a step ahead of the FBI, local police and foreign law enforcement agencies. He finally was arrested in San Jose, Calif., in March. Police said an officer caught him trying to shoplift CDs from a Starbucks.

According to the search-warrant applications, Young had a Virginia identification card with a different name that he used to rent an apartment in Santa Cruz, Calif., from May 2003 until he was captured this spring.

He chose that area so he could get help from animal-rights activists there, the applications said. His apartment was near the home of a fellow activist who was arrested with Young during a protest at the University of California Davis in 1997.

Police who arrested Young also found a Visa card on him that belonged to a San Francisco woman who is considered an animal-rights activist. The search warrant applications said the woman gets mail at Young's apartment.

Officers also found postal delivery receipts on Young. Postal employees said Young brought in 20 to 50 media mail packages containing CDs, DVDs or books to mail to customers of his business, which he ran through his computer. Young was caught trying to steal eight copies of the same CD from Starbucks, the warrant applications said.