Former AIM member takes extradition fight to Supreme Court
Last Updated: Wednesday, August 1, 2007 | 1:12 PM AT
CBC News
John Graham, a former American Indian Movement member who recently lost an appeal against his extradition to the U.S. to face a murder charge in the 1975 slaying of aboriginal activist Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, is now making a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court to hear his case.
Lawyers for Graham, a former Yukoner who now lives in Vancouver, have asked the highest court to overturn a June 26 decision by the B.C. Court of Appeal ordering his extradition. However, there is no guarantee the Supreme Court will hear Graham's case. His family told CBC News that Graham will remain in a detention facility on B.C.'s Lower Mainland while they wait to hear from the court.
John Graham is wanted by U.S. authorities in connection with the death of aboriginal activist Anna-Mae Aquash in 1975.
(CBC)
"It could take up to three to six months before we hear anything," daughter Naneek Graham said Tuesday. "It is frustrating having to wait and to go out to the institute to go visit him. You know, it's really hard."
On June 26, the court denied Graham's appeal to overturn the extradition, allowing his extradition to the U.S. to proceed. Authorities there want him brought to South Dakota to stand trial in the murder of Pictou-Aquash, a Mi'kmaq activist from Nova Scotia.
Graham and Pictou-Aquash were part of the American Indian Movement (AIM) — members of which occupied Wounded Knee, a town on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, in a 71-day standoff over native rights in 1973.
American officials allege that Graham and another man, Arlo Looking Cloud, killed Pictou-Aquash on the Pine Ridge reservation in 1975. FBI investigators believe she was slain for being a suspected FBI informant inside AIM.
Naneek Graham said the Supreme Court's decision could set an important precedent, since her father is not only being extradited for a murder trial, "but my dad is being extradited on hearsay evidence, so this affects everyone.
"My dad's charter rights have been violated because of the extradition act, and I just want people to know that if they can do it to my dad, they'll do it to you as well," she said.
Looking Cloud, the co-defendant in the case, was convicted of first-degree murder in 2006 by a court in Rapid City, S.D.
Graham was arrested in December 2003. In 2005, the B.C. Supreme Court decided he should be sent to the United States to face the charge, and the federal justice minister issued an extradition order against him in June 2006. Graham then took his case to the B.C. Court of Appeal.
