Des Plaines man says he's blessed to be out of Moroccan jail

James Douglas Willson isn't searching for credibility.

He knows his tale of how he ended up in a Moroccan prison is bizarre, but still he maintains his innocence. If anything, he says, he's still searching for answers and he is happy for that opportunity, given that he feared for his life.

When Moroccan prison officials a week ago released him from his cell, he wasn't sure what was happening. Made suspicious by the things he witnessed, "I thought they were going to take me in back to shoot me," Willson said Tuesday from his Des Plaines home.

This is what Willson, 67, knows: After 13 months, he earned a pardon from King Mohammed VI, wiping his criminal record clean and paving the way for his return home. Questions remain as to what convinced the king to grant the pardon and why he was imprisoned in the first place.

"Nothing makes sense to me," he said.

Officials at the Sale prison near the Moroccan capital of Rabat released him without any documentation or record of the pardon. Police had confiscated his passport on May 7, 2008, the date when the twin-engine Cessna Willson was aboard made an emergency landing in the northern part of the country. So Willson had to trek Thursday to the American embassy in Casablanca, which gave him a temporary passport, a State Department spokesman confirmed.

A Moroccan judicial tribunal had sentenced Willson to eight years in prison on charges he illegally entered the country and was trafficking in drugs. They didn't believe his story that the plane made an emergency landing. Willson said he has nothing to do with the drug trade.

"The first time I saw cocaine was in that prison," he said.

Willson, an avid traveler, said his great grandmother helped cultivate his love for travel, and he first flew as a teen and later piloted commercial planes while making friends across the globe.

Willson's account of the flight that took him to Morocco isn't complete; his daughter Marilyn Brief said her father suffers from short-term memory loss. And he said the language barrier made it hard for him to follow what was happening.

Willson said he was on another of his jaunts through Europe, hoping to see family in France with plans to later meet his wife in Edinburgh. One of his pilot friends suggested he should take that friend's Cessna on an aerial tour of Spain. Willson, always a fan of a joy ride agreed, and boarded the plane with a Spanish pilot and took off from Seville, Spain, on what was supposed to be a 90-minute aerial tour.

About an hour into the flight, the plane began sputtering. It appeared to be an electrical problem, Willson said, and the pilot touched down on a Moroccan street. Willson said he didn't even know they were in Morocco.

After about 40 minutes police showed up. Willson, who said he was standing on the landing gear tire, showed them his passport and was taken to the a police station. That was the last time he saw the pilot, who left 10 minutes before the police arrived. Willson still hasn't heard from his friend while having no idea what happened to the plane. The State Department notified his wife, Jean, a week after the plane went down.

Prison life led him to read 500 pages a day trying to entertain himself and distract himself from the rats. Willson points to his abdomen as he tells of seeing a Moroccan prison guard stab a prisoner, and places his arms above his head to show how some prisoners were hung from the ceiling during questioning.

"Some of them, you wouldn't believe the level they go," he said, adding he's thankful he wasn't tortured.

He's also thankful for his wife, daughter and son whose efforts helped win his release. Willson said his captivity made him appreciate the American freedoms many take for granted.

Willson remains bitter toward U.S. government, and said he feels the State Department - and Park Ridge native Hillary Clinton - should have done more to secure his release for crimes he said he didn't commit. "I don't want anything to do with the American government," he said.

He said he suffers from Type II diabetes, but prison doctors doubted that and it wasn't until February that he was given proper medication. The prison also lacked hot water and toilets.

His family sent him care packages with food, which helped. He told fellow prisoners all his food contained pork, which kept the prisoners who were mostly Muslim, away.

"I would share, but this has pork," Willson said with a smile as he recalled what he told them.

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