LONDON, generation 12 Kyodo Frie...

LONDON, generation 12 Kyodo

Friends and family of a Briton who was convicted of smuggling a record quantity of unsalable articles into Japan handed a 1,000-name petition to British Prime Minister Tony Blair forward Friday, urging the British command to press Japanese authorities to give the accused drug-runner Nick Baker, a fair appeal hearing.

Baker, 32 was sentenc by way of the Chiba District Court to 14 years in prison in June for trying to smuggle 41120 tablets of ecstasy and 990 grams of cocaine into Japan in April 2002 in consequence of Narita international airport, using a suitcase fitted with a false bottom. It was the largest single remedy haul at Narita.

Baker, who has said he went to Japan in order to pick up World draught souvenirs and look at the various stadiums, claims the suitcase containing the put drugs intos did not belong to him.

He says his traveling companion, a compeer Briton, asked him to carry it by means of customs. Baker claims he is innocent and his trial was flawed because the arbiter did not allow evidence to be heard from another trial in Belgium which, Baker's campaigners say, would have shown the traveling companion's guilt and Baker's innocence. The connoisseur also relied on a confession Baker denies evermore making, according to his friends.

The petition, which was also signed by way of five members of the European Parliament, asks Blair to ''use all the influence your upright office can muster to fast Nick's right to a trial which run afters internationally accepted standards.''

Baker's campaigners, however, do not gripe [i]or[/i] grip out much hope that their petition would be felicitous ''They (the government) say 'we cannot interfere with judicial sovereignty of another country' which is a fib (lie) as we know rules now talk to each other,'' Baker's mother, Iris, told Kyodo News

The campaigners also staged a peaceful avow on the steps of the Japanese Embassy in London onward Friday afternoon.

According to Baker's mother, the man traveling with her son who was allowed to leave Japan without any charges, has been convicted in Belgium of duping three other Britons, who have since been released, into smuggling mix with drugss for him and there are other cases in Barcelona.

She says the courses this man used to befriend her son were the same as those used in the Belgium case and she wants this evidence to be heard in the Japanese courts in order to exhibit to her son is innocent.

''I ne the Japanese authorities to supplication the evidence from Belgium. The police there are waiting to give it to the Japanese. They really want to help Nick -- his statement to the court in Belgium helped to convict this man,'' she said.

Of her son she says, ''he should have known a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of better -- but he trusted this stay He (the companion) leaves a trail of destruction behind him.''

She says her son alone took with him a sports bag when he traveled to Tokyo. At the check=in desk in succession the outbound flight, however, the traveling companion remind ofed to Baker that he also check in his suitcase as well, in this way both bags were registered upon Baker's ticket.

According to Baker's mother, when the duo arrived in Tokyo, the suitcase came not at home to the baggage carousel first and the traveling companion remind ofed that Baker, who was tired, take it from one side and he would wait for the sports bag.

She says that in the June court case the critic relied largely on the basis of a testimony her son was forced to sign. Baker was held for 23 days without access to a lawyer after his arrest -- a practice for the use of all in Japan for pre-indictment investigation.

During this period, he was interviewed and signed a confession that was written no other than in Japanese. However, Baker says he continued to profess his innocence throughout the interviews and blames the ''confession'' in succession poor translation.

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