FRIENDS PROTEST NV MAN'S EIGHT-MONTH MEXICAN ORDEAL

Friends of a North Vancouver man jailed in Mexico for almost eight
months gathered outside that country's consulate on Tuesday, pleading
for the Canadian government to intervene on his behalf.

Pavel Kulisek, 44, is in a maximum-security prison in Guadalajara,
awaiting trial on drug and organized crime charges for crimes he says
he knows nothing about.

More than 70 people gathered outside the Vancouver consulate on West
Hastings for the noon-hour protest, asserting that Kulisek is innocent
and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was arrested.

"We are not criminals. Never ever, we would be involved in things like
this," said his wife Jirina Kuliskova in an interview with the North
Shore News.

Kulisek was arrested at a Los Barilles hot dog stand alongside a
suspected drug lord on March 11, and taken to a Mexico City holding
facility. In June, he was officially charged with drug trafficking
conspiracy and promotion of drug trafficking, and transferred to a
maximum-security facility.

"It happened in a second. I would never think that something like this
could happen to us," Kuliskova said.

Kulisek and Kuliskova had been living on Mexico's Baja Peninsula with
their two young daughters since October 2007. They bought a house
there and enrolled their eldest in a private Montessori preschool, but
planned to eventually return to their Upper Lonsdale home.

During their stay in Mexico, Kulisek took up motorcycle racing, which
is how he became acquainted with a man who introduced himself as
Carlos Herrera.

Kuliskova said her husband had no idea that "Carlos" was actually
Gustavo Rivera Martinez, a kingpin in the Tijuana cartel and one of
the U.S. Marshals Service and FBI's most wanted men. The two men were
having dinner together when they were both arrested.

According to Kulisek's supporters, the charges against him are based
on statements from a former police officer named Marco Assemat
Hernandez, who is said to be a convicted drug dealer with connections
to Martinez.

"The information that was provided by the prosecutor in the
investigation is not good enough to put anybody in a criminal trial,"
said Kulisek's lawyer, Guillermo Cruz Rico, who also defended Canadian
Brenda Martin on fraud charges in Mexico.

Cruz Rico said that prosecutors have no concrete evidence against
Kulisek, and he believes they are continuing with the criminal
charges, "in order to try to show that they are giving results in the
fight against organized crime in Mexico."

He has filed an appeal against the criminal charges, and is now
awaiting a decision.

In the meantime, Cruz Rico said that he's collected more than 60
affidavits attesting to Kulisek's clean slate in Canada. He's also
contacted officials in Canada and the Czech Republic to prove that
Kulisek does not have a criminal record in those countries; Kulisek
and Kuliskova emigrated from the Czech Republic 18 years ago and have
been Canadian citizens since 1994.

Kuliskova said that her husband's health has deteriorated while he's
been in prison; he has a rash that won't go away, and is suffering
from constant stomach pains.

"He started taking some antidepressant pills 10 days ago, but he said
so far they didn't help much," she said. "He started getting these
uncontrollable crying attacks. He said that he can't sleep because
he's thinking about the girls and us all the time. I guess it's not
easy to be in such a place."

The last eight months have been tough on Kulisek's family, but
Kuliskova said she keeps herself going by focusing on getting her
husband out of jail.

"I have bad days that I like to lock myself somewhere and cry and cry,
but I have two small girls that I have to be strong for, and I have to
keep going," she said. "They are affected, of course they are, but
they're still small. Every evening, they are praying for daddy to come
home. They're asking questions like, is he going to be home for
Halloween? For Christmas? For my birthday? This is the hardest part of
all this."