Japan Seeks Arrests of 3 Americans Accused of Helping Ghosn Escape
The document was the first official confirmation by the Japanese authorities of some of the details of Mr. Ghosn’s flight.
Mr. Ghosn has shared next to no information about the escape, citing concern about the safety of those who aided him.
According to the warrant,
Michael Taylor and Mr. Zayek accompanied Mr. Ghosn from Tokyo to Osaka, nearly 300 miles to the west, where they hid him in “portable luggage” and helped smuggle him through a private jet terminal and onto a plane.
Mr. Ghosn is believed to have hidden in a large black box typically used for transporting audio equipment.
Mr. Taylor
is a private-security contractor with extensive contacts in Lebanon dating to the 1980s, when he was deployed to Beirut as part of a team of United States Special Forces.
Mr. Zayek, whose part in the escape
was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, was born in Lebanon and previously worked with Mr. Taylor’s Boston-based security company.
The arrest warrant was the first public mention of Peter Taylor’s involvement. All three are believed to be American citizens, prosecutors said.
The Taylors and Mr. Zayek have been in the Middle East since Mr. Ghosn’s escape, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Lawyers for the Taylors did not respond to requests for comment, and Mr. Zayek could not be reached for comment.
Japan has an extradition treaty with the United States, potentially putting the men within reach of Japanese prosecutors if they were arrested by American authorities.
In a news conference, a deputy chief prosecutor, Takahiro Saito,
said Peter Taylor had “played an important role in the escape,” having met with Mr. Ghosn at least seven times in Tokyo between July and the day of his escape on Dec. 29.
Mr. Saito said he believed that
the younger Mr. Taylor had been a key conduit for planning the escape,
ultimately reserving a Tokyo hotel room for Mr. Ghosn and providing him with the key.
On the day of his flight, Mr. Ghosn traveled from his home in central Tokyo to the nearby hotel, where he changed clothes before meeting with the other two men, who accompanied him to Osaka, he added.
After the private jet landed in Istanbul,
Mr. Ghosn is believed to have boarded another private jet flight to Beirut.
Michael Taylor and Mr. Zayek are suspected of taking a commercial flight to Lebanon;
the Turkish authorities have released photos showing the two men passing through passport control at the Istanbul airport.
A veteran of the Lebanese civil war, Mr. Zayek has worked with Michael Taylor for decades, including on security contracts in Iraq.
He is the brother of Elias Zayek, a founder of the Lebanese Forces militia who was assassinated in 1990.
Mr. Zayek has also spent time in the United States, earning diplomas in 1982 from the Gemological Institute of America in California, according to school records.
When he was a security consultant, The New York Times hired Michael Taylor to assist in the rescue of David Rohde, then a Times reporter, who was kidnapped by militants in Afghanistan and held for seven months in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
In 2012, Mr. Taylor was indicted for his role in a plan to obstruct a federal fraud investigation into bid rigging of Defense Department contracts and served time in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud.
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/business/carlos-ghosn-arrest-warrants.html
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