“Frankly, I wish the U.S. government would put a little bit more pressure to relieve Greg from the nightmare,” Ghosn said.
A Change.org petition was started by Kevin Kelly, the executive’s son, to ask Washington to “push for a resolution” that allows Kelly to immediately return to the U.S.
It argues that the dispute over Ghosn’s retirement should have been handled as an internal corporate matter, not a criminal one.
It cites a January report in Japan’s Mainichi newspaper saying Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also wanted Nissan to handle the issue internally.
As of last week, the petition had 5,260 signatures.
“My father, Greg Kelly, has been trapped in Japan for the past 15 months, a victim of Japan’s draconian justice system,” the petition says.
Kevin Kelly wrote in a March 9 update that the trial likely will begin this summer, after a third delay.
“My father will return from Japan by fall 2021 at the earliest,” he wrote. “He will have arrived in Japan a 62-year-old man and leave at 65. He will have missed the birth of his second grandson as well as three years of life with his family.”
In Kelly’s commentary for Bungei Shunju, published in Japanese, he said he was stunned when he woke up Dec. 31 to learn of Ghosn’s escape.
“I was shocked,” Kelly said. “I was thinking that Mr. Ghosn’s testimony would be a strong piece of evidence to prove my innocence. But Mr. Ghosn is gone.”
Naoto Okamura contributed to this report.
