Trial for Ghosn escape scapegoats
As expected, Mike and Peter Taylor, the father and son who allegedly engineered Carlos Ghosn's escape from Japan in late December 2019, pled guilty in a Tokyo court on June 14.
I still use the word "allegedly" because what we saw was a show trial, Hanoi Hilton redux. The Taylors, if they hoped ever to get back to their homes in the United States and Lebanon, had no choice but to confess and make a propaganda statement about their treatment in detention.
Mike Taylor, a former decorated member of the US Army's Green Beret Special Forces unit, reportedly told prosecutors what they wanted to hear: that the treatment meted out had been "fair and professional" and that he and Peter hadn't been tortured.
Facts: As of today, the Taylors have spent 106 days in solitary confinement, where they almost assuredly have experienced sensory deprivation and isolation. They still haven't been able to communicate with their family and, for reasons that probably should be investigated, have not yet met with the news media.
Bloomberg News reported that Mike looked "frail." The Wall Street Journal said they both looked "tired."
Of course, they looked worse for wear. They had been forced to spend more than 23 hours a day in tiny 7.2-square meter cells, as is customary for prisoners segregated from the general prison population, sitting on tatami mat floors and allowed to go outside for less than 30 minutes a day, but not at all on weekends.
They hadn't been allowed to speak to each other for more than 15 weeks.
The only people they had seen daily were their jailers, the prosecutors, their lawyers on an as-need basis and, occasionally, someone from the US Embassy who checks in on them.
They had been betrayed by the US government, which not only supported their extradition but litigated it as aggressively as if they were members of a drug cartel and not two guys who allegedly helped someone break bail - for which there is no law in Japan, and thus no crime - or commit an immigration violation.
Carlos Ghosn, the former CEO of Nissan and Renault whom Mike Taylor did help to escape (whether or not Peter was involved), described the conditions they were going to face in a statement to the US federal court where the Taylors' extradition was adjudicated.
"To disorient and discomfort me," Ghosn wrote to the court, "the lights were left on at all times and I was denied access to any time-keeping devices. The cell's only window was blurred and recessed so that I couldn't tell what time of the day it was."
The Taylors will hit the 119-day mark in solitary confinement by their next court appearance at the end of July. To put that in context, 119 days is eight times longer than the maximum period set by the United Nations General Assembly's Nelson Mandela Rules.
It's not being overly dramatic to say that their treatment by the Tokyo prosecutors is a human rights violation. General Assembly Resolution 70/175 stipulates that solitary confinement of more than 22 hours per day is prohibited and that the maximum confinement period is 15 days.
Rule 45 of the UN resolution says: "Solitary confinement shall be used only in exceptional cases as a last resort."Neither the Taylors, nor Carlos Ghosn before them, are threats of any sort. Thus there is no legal justification for their extended solitary confinement.
Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, reported last year that "the severe and often irreparable psychological and physical consequences of solitary confinement and social exclusion may well amount to psychological torture."
The UN's Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading
Treatment or Punishment considers psychological torture to be torture. Japan signed the convention and ignores it.
Moving on to the Taylors' confessions: Since I didn't attend the proceedings, I must rely on the accounts of a small number of reporters who had access to the courtroom.
The prosecutors laid out details of the escape, which Mike Taylor didn't dispute. Mike and George Zayek, Mike's longtime associate, traveled with Ghosn from Tokyo to Osaka on December 29, where they loaded Ghosn into a large black musical instrument box.
The three of them, who earlier in the day had met up with Peter at Peter's Tokyo hotel before setting off by taxi and then bullet train for Osaka, boarded a private business jet to Istanbul with connections to Beirut shortly before midnight.
After briefly meeting with the party, Peter traveled separately to Tokyo's Narita International Airport east of the city and landed in China before any of the Osaka operation took place.
Why Peter was in Japan remains a mystery. The prosecutors have argued that he was part of the operation. If so, it would have been a minor part because Peter had no operational training and the mission his father planned was dangerous.
To the extent that getting Ghosn through immigration and out of Japan is a crime civil law countries like Germany and Japan require there to be a law, otherwise there is no crime - the case is clear-cut.
Other parts of the prosecution's case are less clear-cut and some in direct conflict with other information about the escape and Peter's business dealings with Ghosn. Among them: The Wall Street Journal reported that Mike Taylor first met with Carole Ghosn, Ghosn's wife, in June 2019.