BOSTON—A former Green Beret and his son moved a step closer to being extradited to Japan to face criminal charges in the dramatic escape of former auto titan Carlos Ghosn, after a federal judge ruled against the duo’s latest legal challenge.
Michael L. Taylor, 60 years old, and his son Peter M. Taylor, 27, have been in a Boston-area jail since May, battling a federal government effort to extradite them to Japan. Authorities there want to charge them with crimes allegedly committed when they helped Mr. Ghosn flee that country in late 2019, hidden inside a musical-equipment box.
Late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani rejected the Taylors’ emergency petition to halt the extradition ordered by the State Department. The Taylors argued, among other things, that they would be likely to face torture and unjust treatment in Japan.
“Although the prison conditions in Japan may be deplorable and although the criminal procedures that the Taylors may be subjected to may not satisfy American notions of due process, those allegations do not constitute the ‘severe physical or mental pain or suffering’ ” contemplated in regulations governing extradition matters, Judge Talwani ruled.
The Taylors’ attorneys immediately filed a motion that they would appeal the ruling, court documents show. The attorneys didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Ghosn was facing financial-crime charges in Japan when he disappeared in a Hollywood-worthy plot in which he took a bullet train 300 miles from Tokyo to Osaka and then was smuggled aboard a private jet inside a musical-equipment box. Mr. Ghosn had been out on bail and living in a court-monitored house in Tokyo at the time of the escape.
The former head of auto-making partners Nissan Motors Co. and Renault SA turned up in Lebanon, which has no extradition treaty with Japan.
Michael Taylor, who ran a private-security business after leaving the U.S. Army Special Forces, has a history of arranging complicated overseas rescues and other missions.
The Taylors’ lawyers haven’t denied that the pair took part in the escape, but argued that the father-and-son duo didn’t commit a crime in Japan. Bail-jumping isn’t illegal in the country, and the Japanese law against harboring criminals under which the Taylors were charged doesn’t apply, they have argued.
Write to Mark Maremont at [email protected]
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