CHAMPAGNE-MOUTON, France – French police took convicted murderer Ira Einhorn from his home in this southwestern village Thursday, speeding him away to waiting American officials for the trip home to the United States.

The extradition was an end to two decades of flight for the 61-year-old former anti-war activist and counterculture figure, convicted in absentia of the bludgeoning death of his girlfriend, Holly Maddux, in 1977. He faces a new trial in Pennsylvania.

Einhorn was led outside, an officer holding each arm, and bundled into an unmarked gray Peugeot. Seated in the back, he waved through the window to his wife, Annika, who leaned on a defense lawyer for support. The convoy then left, and Einhorn’s lawyer said he would be taken to Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris.

The developments came after the European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg, France, dropped its request that France postpone the extradition. The court ruled that Einhorn’s medical condition was satisfactory – he had slit his throat in protest last week – and that U.S. officials had provided assurances he would not face the death penalty.

A 1998 Pennsylvania law provided for a retrial, and U.S. officials promised that Einhorn would not be eligible for the death penalty because capital punishment was not legal in that state at the time of the crime. European Union countries generally refuse to extradite suspects who face the death penalty.

In a move that confused lawyers, the European court also said it would still consider Einhorn’s case in September, and asked France for more details on the guarantees of a new trial. However, a court spokeswoman, Emma Hellyer, told The Associated Press: “That has nothing to do with the extradition.”

France had been preparing to extradite Einhorn last week, but agreed to wait a week until the European court examined the case.

Earlier Thursday, Einhorn told AP that if he lost the appeal, he would go peacefully.

“If there is to be any transfer, we want it to be totally peaceful,” Einhorn said by telephone. “Nobody is going to be hurt.”

Asked if he might repeat the self-inflicted violence of last week, when he slit his throat after losing his last French appeal, he laughed. “Oh, I really do doubt that,” he said. He suffered no serious injury, though his throat remains bandaged.

He spent most of Wednesday inside, guarded by two vans of police and receiving a few visitors. He had thrown a party the night before, which he called a “last supper,” and a birthday party for his wife. Guests had chatted and sipped wine from plastic cups until late into the night.

Reaction was swift from the victim’s family.

“When we see him in handcuffs in the custody of an American citizen, we will be really happy,” said Holly Maddux’s sister Meg Wakeman, a Seattle-based nurse who was in Washington, D.C., for the introduction of a proposed extradition enforcement bill.

The man who arrested Einhorn for Maddux’s 1977 murder, only to see him flee the country and disappear before facing trial, said he won’t be relieved until Einhorn arrives in the United States.

“Ira Einhorn is the ultimate manipulator,” said Michael Chitwood, who discovered Maddux’s mummified body in a locked steamer trunk in Einhorn’s apartment in 1979. “I will remain cautiously optimistic until he’s back in a cell in Pennsylvania under lock and key.

“It’s been a long, long road and there’s no closure to that road at this point in time,” said Chitwood, now chief of police in Portland, Maine. “Stay tuned.”

Einhorn denies having killed Maddux, saying he was framed by the CIA.

He fled the United States in 1981, shortly before he was to stand trial for the murder. He lived in England, Ireland and Sweden under pseudonyms before he was arrested in France in 1997.