Frank 'The German' Schweihs not too sick to hurl insults

Alleged mobster Frank "The German" Schweihs appeared in federal court Tuesday pale and weak after a long illness but not too sick to lash out at the prosecutors with a string of nasty outbursts.

Schweihs began by turning to Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bachu, who wears a black turban, with a sneering remark about thinking for a minute that he was "in a foreign country."

Schweihs was in a wheelchair and clad in an orange prison jumpsuit. He was very pale after a long battle with cancer. His mood, though, was anything but subdued.

"You making eyes at me?" he blurted accusatorially at Bachu and another federal prosecutor, Markus Funk.

Before the hearing was finished and marshals wheeled him away, Schweihs spat out one last insult -- an obscenity -- to describe one of the prosecutors; it wasn't clear which one.

Judge James B. Zagel paid no attention to the outbursts and went ahead with the hearing, during which defense attorneys said Schweihs has rescinded an order he signed earlier that asked officials not to resuscitate him if he were near death.

Despite his weakened condition, Schweihs was guarded Tuesday by a phalanx of husky federal marshals.

Schweihs, 78, went on the run three years ago when prosecutors unveiled their sweeping Operation Family Secrets indictment against the top echelon of the Chicago mob.

He was missing for eight months before FBI agents swooped down on his hideaway nestled deep in the Kentucky hills.

Then he missed the Family Secrets trial due to illness.

Federal prosecutors say Schweihs is now healthy enough to face trial, which has been set for Oct. 28.

He is accused of a June 1986 murder of a potential witness in Arizona and squeezing "street tax" payments out of a suburban strip joint and an Indiana pornography shop by threatening the owners with violence.

He's also accused of going on the run to avoid prosecution.

The Family Secrets trial ended last September with the conviction of five alleged mobsters in a racketeering conspiracy involving decades of extortion, loan sharking.