Wife says innocent Des Plaines man jailed in Morocco on drug charges

When Jean Willson hangs up the telephone with her husband, she worries she has heard his voice for the last time.

In roughly 30 calls home to Des Plaines since last May, James Douglas Willson has painted a sordid picture of his life and failing health as he is locked in a Moroccan prison, about 4,300 miles away.

The last call left Jean and daughter Marilyn Brief in tears.

"We just heard that he's very, very ill, and even going to a hospital there isn't going to save him because he has no immune system anymore," said Brief, 45, of Green Oaks.

Willson, a retired airline pilot, was sentenced to eight years in prison by a Moroccan court after being convicted of illegally entering that country and drug trafficking.

Jean Willson and Brief believe the charges are preposterous. He's 67, a grandfather, has been involved in his community and doesn't have a criminal record.

Yet they're more concerned for his life right now.

Since visiting him in prison last June and seeing first hand that he had lost a lot of weight, the family has repeatedly beseeched state and federal legislators, the U.S. Embassy in Morocco and the U.S. State Department to intervene, but say their requests have fallen on deaf ears.

"We are embarrassed to be U.S. citizens, and that nobody listens," Brief said.

The family says Willson is wasting away from untreated diabetes, though Moroccan authorities and the U.S. government dispute that.

U.S. State Department spokesman Andy Laine said U.S. Embassy personnel have visited Willson in prison monthly and are monitoring his health. "I am told there is no indication that Mr. Willson is suffering from a critical or terminal illness," Laine said.

It's not the U.S. government's job to determine his guilt or innocence, Laine said. Hundreds of U.S. citizens are jailed in foreign prisons and, in most cases, the United States steps in only if a prisoner is being abused or tortured.

In calls to his family, Willson complains of loss of feeling in his toes and feet, blurry vision, malnourishment, dehydration, diarrhea and severe chest pains.

The medical problems and periodic lapses in communication are taking their toll on the family.

"It's over stressful, especially when your government, they know he's innocent, and they are not helping bring him home. If they did their job, he wouldn't be there. He's just one man to them, but he's everything to us," Jean Willson said.

An avid traveler, Willson flew for the defunct Chicago-based Midway Airlines and has been a pilot since he was 15.

"That's his first love," Brief said.

He has been a Boy Scout leader and a member of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Des Plaines for more than 35 years. He'd help neighbors by mowing lawns and shoveling snow, and stop to help someone in an accident, Brief said.

Even his family admits the events leading to his imprisonment are beyond their comprehension, yet they steadfastly believe he was caught in a whirlwind of unfortunate circumstances.

"I know my dad well enough and I directly asked him," Brief said. "If I had any doubt, I would not be helping him."

Willson was touring southern Spain where he met a local pilot who offered to take him on an aerial tour of the country, Brief said. A mechanical malfunction in the twin-engine Cessna 337 forced an emergency landing in rural northern Morocco on May 7, 2008, according to official reports.

What happened next is unclear.

Willson says the pilot and a few locals who gathered to help ran off before authorities arrived. He also tried to run from police because he didn't speak the language and didn't understand what was happening, but was caught.

Willson, who wasn't carrying a passport or any other identification, was charged with illegal entry into Morocco and drug trafficking, though neither drugs nor money was found on him or the plane.

"They don't have any evidence," Willson's Moroccan attorney Anis Mouafik said. "They just think that something was about to happen."

Moroccan authorities believe Willson piloted the plane and was there to pick up drugs because the area is a known passageway for drug trafficking into Europe, Mouafik said.

Authorities never found a second pilot. Moroccans believed by authorities to be Willson's accomplices received prison sentences on related charges, according to official reports.

Mouafik said one of those "accomplices" was actually trying to help Willson and the pilot start the plane's engine with a battery. He added that authorities traced cell phone calls made in the area to find the other accomplices because they found a cell phone inside Willson's jacket pocket in the plane.

Willson's family says the Moroccan legal process was not fair. Willson's hearing was postponed several times because neither the court nor the U.S. Embassy would get him an Arabic translator. His family ultimately paid to get a translator from Casablanca, 155 miles away, to the hearing, Mouafik said.

Mouafik said Willson's initial police report was written without an independent translator present. "The one translating was also a policeman," Mouafik said. "And this is not normal. It's illegal for the same people doing the report to do the translation."

That argument didn't fly in court. Three judges found Willson guilty and sentenced him to seven years in prison. And then, when a three-judge appellate panel upheld the earlier verdict, it added a year to his sentence.

Willson is at the Sale prison, near the Moroccan capital Rabat, waiting for his case to be heard in the nation's supreme court at an undetermined date.

Prison life

Individual mattresses are a luxury in Moroccan prisons and Mouafik wasn't allowed to bring one in for Willson. Brief said Willson sleeps on a metal slab atop the cement floor with no heat or windows in nighttime temperatures of around 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

"It's a cell set up for 20 people and you've got over 30 people in there, and some people have to sleep on the ground," she said. "There's no toilet paper in the bathroom. It's just a hole in the ground."

Mouafik last saw Willson in January after he was transferred 53 miles from a rural prison to Sale. He said he still has hope the Moroccan supreme court will reverse Willson's conviction. But the court has a backlog of cases, while Willson's health worsens daily.

A pardon is a possibility, albeit remote. "If the U.S. government intervenes, not saying it will make the king give the pardon, at least it will make the file held in priority," Mouafik said.

Pardon not likely

Just how much influence the U.S. government wields over a sovereign nation's internal laws depends on the country in question.

The U.S. State Department's Web site hails Morocco, a moderate Arab monarchy moving toward a more democratic system of governance, as its "oldest friend in the region." The relationship has strategic value since Morocco is one of several countries where the United States has sent suspected terrorists and prisoners for interrogation.

And Morocco, a major producer and exporter of hashish, a form of cannabis, has cracked down on the drug trade in recent years, and handed out severe punishments.

It would require high-level intervention to spring Willson, said Simon O'Rourke, Morocco expert at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. And challenging Morocco's legal system could hurt diplomatic relations with a key ally in North Africa and the Middle East, he said.

"I would say that perhaps this is a situation where an American was in the wrong place at the wrong time," O'Rourke said.

U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, a Highland Park Republican, said U.S. consular officials can demand to see Willson, check on his physical condition and insist on legal representation and medical care, but they cannot force his release.

"Absent of military invasion, we can only work with the government," Kirk said.

A pardon, he added, could be a consideration, but it is rare.

Kirk's staff has traded dozens of phone calls and e-mails with the U.S. Embassy in Morocco on Willson's family's behalf inquiring about his health.

Kirk said Willson's best chance of release is to work through the judicial process.

Frustrated, yet not defeated, Willson's family is desperately reaching out to more Congressional representatives.

"Every day that we don't do anything is costing my father," Brief said. "I will go to whatever lengths I have to to bring him home."