Graham pleads not guilty in Aquash slaying
Dec 7, 2007
Associated Press
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) Four years after he was arrested for the 1975 killing of a fellow American Indian Movement activist, 52-year-old John Graham pleaded not guilty today at his first appearance in Rapid City federal court.
Graham is charged with first-degree murder for the slaying of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash (PEEK’-too AHK’-wash) on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Her body was found in February 1976.
Graham, a Canadian, had been in custody in British Columbia since June. He was extradited to the U.S. yesterday.
His court hearing took less than 15 minutes. A prosecutor told a magistrate judge that Graham is a flight risk and needs to be detained. Graham was sent to the Pennington County Jail.
Rapid City lawyer John Murphy was appointed to represent Graham.
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Family of 1975 slaying suspect shocked by swift extradition
Friday, December 7, 2007
CBC News Nova Scotia
The family of B.C. resident John Graham, who is accused in a decades-old murder in the U.S., say they are shocked and angry he was extradited without notice hours after the Supreme Court dismissed his appeal to stay in the country.
His daughter told CBC News she doesn’t understand why the family wasn’t given a chance to say their goodbyes, especially since he was already in custody.
“We weren’t given anything. Nobody would hear anything. We just wanted to see our dad at least before he was extradited,” said Naneek Graham, one of his eight children in Canada.
Early Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear Graham’s appeal of a lower court ruling granting extradition. The top court did not provide a reason, as per usual for such applications.
Graham’s lawyer, Greg DelBigio, told CBCNews.ca that there has been no formal confirmation, but he believes Graham was whisked from the North Fraser Pretrial Centre around 9 or 10 a.m. PT to South Dakota, hours after the court decision.
Graham, a former Yukoner who now lives in Vancouver, is accused of killing Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, a Mi’kmaq activist from Nova Scotia, in 1975 during a time of protests in South Dakota by the American Indian Movement (AIM).
Graham’s daughter says her father is being kept at Pennington County Jail in Rapid City, S.D., and he was scheduled to appear in court Friday afternoon.
U.S. prosecutors allege the 30-year-old woman was killed on orders from AIM because they believed she was an FBI informant.
Earlier in protests by the group, two FBI agents had been killed by the demonstrators who had seized control of the village of Wounded Knee.
U.S. authorities say Pictou-Aquash fled to Denver out of fear for her life, but then was allegedly abducted by Graham and others and brought back for questioning by AIM members.
Another man, Arlo Looking Cloud, was convicted of first-degree murder in Pictou-Aquash’s death in 2005 and sentenced to life in prison.
Looking Cloud told FBI agents that he saw Graham kill the woman, but later recanted. Graham has maintained his innocence.
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U.S. seizes Canadian as appeal fails
‘Chilling repeat’ of Leonard Peltier case
Suzanne Fournier, The Province
Published: Friday, December 07, 2007
A Canadian aboriginal man has been “unceremoniously whisked away” to Rapid City, South Dakota, to face 28-year-old murder charges without being able to consult his lawyer or say goodbye to his family.
John Graham, 51, a Southern Tutchone from the Yukon and grandfather of 13, who has been living in Vancouver for many years, “wasn’t even allowed to hug us goodbye, talk to his lawyer or appeal to the Canadian justice minister to consider his sovereign rights as an aboriginal person,” said Graham’s grief-stricken daughter, Naneek Graham.
The Supreme Court of Canada did not give any reasons yesterday for turning down Graham’s appeal to remain in Canada rather than be sent to South Dakota to face charges than he murdered Miq’maq activist Anna Mae Aquash.
“It is inhumane that my father as a First Nations person could just be kidnapped to the U.S. without a Canadian court ever hearing the case or looking into the complete lack of evidence against him,” said Naneek Graham.
Graham’s lawyer, Greg DelBigio, said he was not allowed to speak to his client. “I was surprised that within a few hours of the Supreme Court of Canada giving its decision, Mr. Graham had already been transported.”
DelBigio said that Canadian Justice Minister Robert Nicholson had received “hundreds” of letters and postcards but did not have time to consider a ministerial reprieve.
Graham, 51, maintains he had nothing to do with the murder of his friend Aquash, who was found in a South Dakota snowbank in February 1976 after a rogue FBI agent had repeatedly threatened to kill her.
On FBI instructions, Aquash’s hands were severed and her family told she had died of “natural causes.”
Aquash’s family demanded a second autopsy which showed Aquash had been shot in the head.
Aquash’s two daughters, one of whom is Nova Scotia RCMP officer Deborah Maloney, who was 10 when her mother died, have lobbied tirelessly for justice on behalf of their mother and the Miq’maq Nation of Nova Scotia. Maloney has attended Graham’s court proceedings in Vancouver.
Deborah Strachan, lawyer for the U.S. government, argued in B.C. Supreme and Appeal courts that Aquash was kidnapped and murdered by members of the American Indian Movement because they believed she was an FBI informant.
Amnesty International activist Jennifer Wade says Graham’s extradition is a “chilling repeat of what happened to Leonard Peltier and should never have been repeated.”
In 1976, the U.S. extradited Leonard Peltier from Canada using affidavits that turned out to be false. Former federal justice minister Warren Allmand has said he would never have extradited Peltier had he know the evidence was fabricated. Peltier is still in a U.S. jail for the murder of two FBI agents.
The extradition judge, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Bennett, said she was troubled by “unsatisfactory” evidence in Graham’s case but Canada’s extradition treaty with the U.S. does not allow an examination of evidence.
Graham, represented by U.S. lawyer John Murphy, will appear in court this week in Rapid City.
