VANCOUVER – Four men have lost their fight in the B.C. Court of Appeal for a judicial review of their extradition to California.
Darrell Romano, Ivan Djuracic, Aaron Anderson and Jamie Nenasheff are facing drug trafficking charges in the United States.
The court says it is alleged that in 2006 marijuana was hidden in hollowed-out logs that were shipped from a workshop in Armstrong, B.C., to what appeared to be a log-home businesses in Ontario, Calif.
Three others are being extradited, but the four men appealed to the immigration minister to set aside their extradition on several grounds, including the potential violation of their charter rights should a harsher sentence be imposed in the U.S.
When the minister would not intervene, the men sought a judicial review of his decisions.
But the three-judge panel of the appeal court unanimously decided in a written judgment released Wednesday to refuse the review.
“The applicants have not established there to be good reason the minister’s decisions are not to be afforded the deference that is normally to be afforded executive decisions of this kind,” the decision says.
Three of the men made submissions to the minister, but in his response he says Canada’s extradition treaty doesn’t allow him to refuse surrender of someone because of penalties under U.S. law, except for death penalty cases.
“Indeed, the Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly held that surrender, where the person sought was potentially facing a lengthy mandatory minimum sentence upon conviction, does not violate … the charter,” the minister said.
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