The two Americans accused of orchestrating Carlos Ghosn’s daring escape from custody have been extradited to Japan.
Authorities believe that 60-year-old US Army Special Forces veteran and private security specialist Michael Taylor and his son, Peter Taylor, received approximately $1.3 million to help Ghosn flee Japan in late December 2019.
While Ghosn remains in Lebanon because the country has no extradition treaty with Japan, both Michael and Peter Taylor were arrested last year in the U.S. and have been held in a Massachusetts jail since May. For months, their lawyers asserted that they could not be extradited to Japan for helping someone jump bail and suggested they could be subject to “mental and physical torture” at the hands of Japanese authorities, BBC reports.
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However, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for their extradition in February and earlier this week they were flown to Japan.
“This is a sad day for the family, and for all who believe that veterans deserve better treatment from their own country,” the Taylors’ lawyer Paul Kelly said in a statement.
Japanese prosecutors claim that Peter Taylor flew to Japan and met with Ghosn at the Grand Hyatt Hotel for approximately one hour on December 28, 2019. The following day, Michael Taylor flew into Osaka on a chartered Bombardier Global Express jet.
The Taylors, accomplice George-Antonie Zayek, and Ghosn then met at a hotel on December 29 and boarded a bullet train to Osaka. Peter Taylor then left the country and flew to China while the others headed to a hotel in the city where Ghosn was loaded into a box used for transporting audio equipment. The following day, the trio flew to Turkey before boarding to a second private jet and flying to Beirut, Lebanon.
