The World - News from Nov. 8, 1988

American free-lance photographer Conan Owen, 24, convicted of smuggling cocaine into Spain, returned to the United States, ostensibly to complete the last 5 1/2 years of a six-year Spanish prison term. He arrived in New York under the terms of a 1983 treaty that provides for the transfer of prisoners between the United States and Spain when a citizen of one country is convicted of a crime in the other. Owen was sentenced in April after being convicted of taking four pounds of cocaine into Spain from Chile in March, 1987, in a false-bottom suitcase. His claim of having been duped into carrying the cocaine was substantiated by a naturalized U.S. citizen who was later indicted. Owen hopes to receive a pardon from the U.S. Justice Department.