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The family of a Canadian businessman detained in Mexico is pleading with the federal government to intervene on his behalf and bring him home.
Pavel Kulisek, 43, was arrested March 11 in Los Barilles and held in a detention centre in Mexico City. He was officially charged on June 16 with drug trafficking, promoting drug trafficking and promoting organized crime and has since been languishing in a maximum security prison in Guadalajara.
His lawyers and family say the charges are unfounded, and the North Vancouver man has instead been imprisoned because he "happened to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time."
Kulisek, his wife and their two daughters, aged four and six, had been living in Los Barilles on Mexico's Baja Peninsula since October 2007. They enrolled their eldest daughter in a private Montessori preschool and Kulisek had received his real estate licence.
He took up motorbike racing, and it was at a local bike race he met someone he thought was a new friend. The friend, who called himself Carlos Harrera, is actually Gustavo Rivera Martinez -- one of the U.S. Marshals Service and FBI's most wanted men and kingpin of the Tijuana cartel, which was made famous in the movie Traffic.
When police swooped in on him having dinner in March, Kulisek was there and was also arrested.
"I was shocked, because I had no idea that Carols was involved in such activities," said Kulisek's wife, Jirina Kuliskova, in an interview with the North Shore News from her North Vancouver home, where she and her children returned for safety after her husband's arrest. "So, he just fooled us, I guess. Totally fooled us."
She said Martinez, who was going by his alias when the family met him, was a "well-liked" and "well-respected man in the community" with a wife and four children.
"We knew this guy (Martinez) under a totally different identity. We hadn't had the slightest of suspicion of him being involved in such a thing," said Kuliskova. "Nobody in the community had any ideas as to what he was up to."
Kulisek and wife Kuliskova moved to Canada from the Czech Republic 18 years ago and became Canadian citizens in 1994. They settled in North Vancouver and Kulisek worked for Bowen Island Cable TV in the early 1990s. He worked with a business partner in the construction industry remodelling and renovating homes for 10 years before moving to Mexico, anticipating living in his dream home with his family.
"There are no criminal ties whatsoever anywhere in the world," Kuliskova insisted, referring to her husband. "Not in Czech. Not in Canada. And not in Mexico."
But she knows it is hard to fight the Mexican justice system. The family hired lawyer Guillermo Cruz Rico, who two months ago defended another Canadian, Brenda Martin, held in the same prison on fraud charges.
Upon recommendation from her lawyers, the family only decided to contact Canadian media organizations this month, four months after Kulisek's arrest. "I was afraid to go public, just because I didn't want to upset anybody in Mexico," she said of her delay to go public. "But I realized that I can't do it by myself [without the media's attention]. It's just impossible."
She added that she is in constant contact with Foreign Affairs Ministry, the Canadian Consulate in Guadalajara and North Vancouver MP Don Bell, but reaching her husband has been a struggle. He has been given weekly 12-minute telephone privileges to Canada.
Meanwhile, Kulisek's wife worry about his health, which she says has been deteriorating due to insufficient medical care. "He has constant stomach pains that he couldn't get rid of. It may be the water or food," she said.
Kuliskova said Cruz Rico predicts it may take upwards of a year before the case goes to trial, and a number of preliminary hearings are scheduled to be held in the coming months starting Aug. 5.
"I can tell you he's not guilty. . . . It's horrible. I know that they have to go through the whole process. I have to live with it and there is no other choice."
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