Ex-Green Beret nabbed in exec's escape has lived on the edge

Decades before a security camera caught Michael Taylor coming off a jet that was carrying one of the world’s most-wanted fugitives, the former Green Beret had a hard-earned reputation for taking on dicey assignments.

Over the years, Taylor had been hired by parents to rescue abducted children. He went undercover for the FBI to sting a Massachusetts drug gang. And he worked as a military contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan, an assignment that landed him in a Utah jail in a federal fraud case.

So when Taylor was linked to the December escape of former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn from Japan, where the executive awaited trial on financial misconduct charges, some in U.S. military and legal circles immediately recognized the name.

Taylor has “gotten himself involved in situations that most people would never even think of, dangerous situations, but for all the right reasons,” Paul Kelly, a former federal prosecutor in Boston who has known the security consultant since the early 1990s, said earlier this year.

“Was I surprised when I read the story that he may have been involved in what took place in Japan? No, not at all.”

Wednesday, after months as fugitives, the 59-year-old Taylor and his 27-year-old son, Peter, were arrested in Massachusetts on charges accusing them of hiding Ghosn in a shipping case drilled with air holes and smuggling him out of Japan on a chartered jet. Investigators were still seeking George-Antoine Zayek, a Lebanese-born colleague of Taylor.

Kelly, now serving as the attorney for the Taylors, said they plan to challenge Japan’s extradition request “on several legal and factual grounds.”

“Michael Taylor is a distinguished veteran and patriot, and both he and his son deserve a full and fair hearing regarding these issues,” Kelly said...