A U.S. appeals court on Thursday refused to seize the extradition of two men wanted by Japan on charges that they helped former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn get out of a box in 2019.
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Court of Appeals has rejected an emergency petition to suspend Michael and Peter Taylor’s extradition to give them time to challenge a lower court decision.
The US government has said it could surrender the men to Japan on Friday.
In a brief ruling, the 1st Circuit said the Taylors did not show that they were likely to succeed based on their case.
A U.S. appeals court on Thursday refused to overturn the extradition of Michael (pictured) and his son Peter Taylor, who is wanted by Japan, on charges that they helped oust former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn from the country. smuggling in 2019
Taylor, a former Massachusetts Green Beret, and his son are wanted by Japan so they can be tried on allegations that they aided Ghosn (pictured)’s daring escape from the country while he was out on bail and awaiting trial on charges. of financial misconduct.
An email commenting was sent to a lawyer for the Taylors. Lawyers for the Taylors say the men could not be extradited because bail jumping is not a crime in Japan, nor is it a crime to help someone evade their bail conditions.
They believe that the men in Japan will be subjected to ‘mental and physical torture’, which the criminal justice system describes as ‘similar to that of an authoritarian regime’.
Michael Taylor, a former Massachusetts Green Beret and private security specialist, and his son are wanted by Japan so they can be tried on allegations that they aided Ghosn’s daring escape from the country while he was on bail and awaiting trial on financial misconduct. charges.
Elder Taylor was allegedly paid $ 1.3 million to keep Ghosn in a box and transport him from Japan.
Michael Taylor said in an interview with The Associated Press this month that he fears they will be treated unfairly in the Japanese legal system and that he feels betrayed that the US will try to surrender to Japan after his service to the country.
“You devote your time to the military and you serve in combat and you do a whole lot of other things,” Michael Taylor said.
‘And now they want to extradite me and my son to Japan for something like that? Yes, you feel a great betrayal. ‘
The Taylors’ defense team urged the Trump White House to step in.
The father and son hired two strong lawyers with connections to former President Donald Trump – Abbe Lowell, who represented Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer – in hopes that the case would attract Trump’s attention before he left office.
Taylor had hoped that President Joe Biden’s government would reconsider the matter, but the White House did not comment.
‘My father is now in his mid – 80s. We are going to get over it and we will be tortured. I’m not going to be here my father’s last days, which of course I would like. His grandson wants to be like that too, ‘said Michael Taylor. “Don’t you think we’ve been punished enough already?”
The U.S. Department of Justice this week in court documents called the claims in Taylors’ attempt to stop the extradition “unprecedented and deserving” and noted that it had already been rejected by other judges.
Taylor, center and George-Antoine Zayek show at a passport control at Istanbul airport in Turkey.
These are the metal instrument holders allegedly used during Ghosn’s escape from Japan to Lebanon by Turkey
This image shows details of how the escape took place in 2019
A DOJ spokesman said all those extradited to Japan for trial for alleged crimes committed there, “all rights and all rights normally available to all defendants facing criminal charges in Japan” get. ‘
The U.S. State Department agreed to hand over the pair to Japan in October, but a federal judge in Boston thwarted the extradition after their attorneys filed an emergency request.
The judge rejected the petition last week and paved the way for extradition before the lawyers appealed to the 1st Circle.
Taylor declined to discuss the details of the case due to the possibility that he will be tried in Japan. But he insisted that his son “was not involved” and that he was not in Japan when Ghosn left.
Prosecutors described it as one of the most shameless and well-orchestrated escape actions in recent history.
Shortly before the escape, Ghosn linked more than $ 860,000 to a company linked to Peter Taylor, and Ghosn’s son later made $ 500,000 in cryptocurrency payments, authorities said.
On the day of the escape, Michael Taylor flies with another man, George-Antoine Zayek, in a chartered plane inside Osaka, carrying two large black boxes and pretending to be musicians with audio equipment, authorities said.
Ghosn’s escape came when he was awaiting trial on allegations that he underreported his future income and committed a breach of trust by diverting Nissan Motor money for his personal gain.
Taylor (right) refused to discuss the details of the case due to the possibility that he will be tried in Japan. But he insisted that his son (left) was ‘not involved’ and was not in Japan when Ghosn left
Taylor (right) and his son (left, when he was much younger) were arrested in May for their alleged involvement in Ghosn’s escape in December 2019 and are being held in a Massachusetts prison.
He left for the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo and met with Peter Taylor, who was already in Japan, authorities say.
Older Taylor and Zayek met the other two in the Grand Hyatt and shortly thereafter they broke up.
Peter Taylor jumped on a flight to China while the others boarded a cool train and headed back to another hotel near the airport, where Taylor and Zayek booked a room. They all went in; only Ghosn’s rescuers were seen running out.
According to authorities, Ghosn was in one of the big black boxes. At the airport, the boxes went through a security checkpoint without being checked, and it was loaded into a private plane en route to Turkey, officials said.
Ghosn, who led Nissan for two decades and saved it from near bankruptcy, denies any wrongdoing.
He said he fled because he could not expect a fair trial, was subject to unfair conditions in custody and that his wife could not meet under his bail conditions.
He is now in Lebanon, where he has citizenship but who has no extradition treaty with Japan.
Over the years, Elder Taylor was hired by parents to rescue abducted children, sheltered for the FBI in a sting on a drug gang in Massachusetts, and worked as a contractor for the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. And this is not the first time he has found himself in legal trouble.
In 2012, federal prosecutors claimed Taylor had won a U.S. military contract to train Afghan soldiers using secret information from a U.S. officer.
When Taylor learned that the contract was being investigated, he asked an agent and a friend of the FBI to intervene. Taylor spent 14 months in jail before agreeing to plead guilty to two charges.