Americans accused of aiding Carlos Ghosn’s escape taken into Japanese custody

The father and son accused of orchestrating Carlos Ghosn’s daring escape from Japan have arrived in Tokyo from the US after being arrested by Japanese prosecutors.

Michael Taylor, a former Green Beret-turned-security contractor, and his 28-year-old son, Peter, had been fighting extradition to Japan since their arrest outside Boston last May.

Television footage showed the two men arriving at Narita airport near Tokyo wearing masks. They had already received Covid-19 vaccines before departing the US.

Taylor, 60, warned in a recent interview with the Associated Press that he feared he and his son would be treated unfairly, and possibly tortured, by Japanese authorities. 

But the US Supreme Court last month rejected an emergency petition filed by their lawyers, clearing the way for them to face charges in Japan.

Japanese authorities have accused the Taylors of leading an operation in December 2019 to smuggle Ghosn out of the country in a musical equipment case that had special air holes drilled into it. At the time, the former Nissan chairman was on bail in Japan awaiting trial on charges of financial misconduct.

The plan involved whisking Ghosn on a bullet train from Tokyo to an airport with lighter security in Osaka before taking him by private jet to Turkey and then to Lebanon, which does not have an extradition treaty with Japan.

Ghosn, who has remained in Beirut, has denied the financial charges, and said he fled because he would not have received a fair trial in Japan.

In a statement, Tokyo prosecutors said they had arrested the Taylors on suspicion of “aiding the escape of a criminal”. If convicted, they could face up to three years in prison.

Prosecutors are expected to begin interrogating the two men at the Tokyo detention centre where Ghosn was held after his arrest in November 2018. They have left open the possibility of adding a second charge that the Taylors violated Japan’s immigration control law.

Lawyers for the two men had previously argued that “jumping bail” was not technically a crime in Japan.

Yoko Kamikawa, Japan’s justice minister, declined to comment on the arrest of the Taylors at a news conference on Tuesday, but said she believed Ghosn should also face trial in the country. 

Before allegedly taking part in the Ghosn escape, Michael Taylor specialised in extracting hostages and abducted children in the Middle East and performed undercover work in the region for the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

He also spent 14 months in prison in Utah for bribery and kickbacks in connection with $54m in US security contracts in Afghanistan. Years earlier, he had brushes with the law as a private investigator in Boston.

In interviews, Taylor, whose wife is Lebanese, said he was motivated to help Ghosn out of principle, not profit.

The US Department of Justice confirmed the extraditions in a statement on Tuesday.

A court in Istanbul last month handed prison sentences to three employees of the Turkish airline that ferried Ghosn out of Japan. 

Greg Kelly, Ghosn’s former deputy, is also on trial in Tokyo, fighting charges that he helped Nissan’s former chairman conceal the true scale of his pay.