AMERICAN YANKED FROM VANCOUVER HOSPITAL AND DEPORTED, SAYS LAWYER

SEATTLE -- A U.S. army veteran who fled to Canada to avoid
prosecution because he grew marijuana to help control chronic pain
was yanked from a hospital by Canadian authorities and, with a
catheter still attached, turned over to U.S. officials who provided
him with no medical treatment for five days, his lawyer said.

Steven Tuck, 38, was still fitted with the urinary catheter when he
shuffled into U.S. District Court for a detention hearing yesterday,
said his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt.

Judge James Donohue ordered Tuck temporarily released so he could be
taken to a medical centre for treatment.

"The guy comes into the jail with a catheter sticking out the end of
his (penis), you'd think they'd do something about it!" Hiatt said,
launching into a profanity-laced tirade after the hearing.

"This is totally inhumane. He's been tortured for days for no reason."

Tuck is a veteran who said he suffered debilitating injuries in the
late 1980s, when his parachute failed to open during a jump. He spent
a year at Walter Reed Army Medical Center undergoing surgeries to
fuse discs in his back, Hiatt said.

In 2001, he was living in California when his marijuana grow
operation was raided for the second time.

He fled to British Columbia to avoid prosecution, and sought asylum
status, which was recently denied.

Last Friday, he checked himself in to St. Paul's Hospital in
Vancouver, because he had a cyst on his prostate and was having
difficulty urinating, Hiatt said.

In a phone interview from Vancouver, Richard Cowan, a friend of
Tuck's who runs the website marijuananews.com, said he was with Tuck
at the hospital when Canadian authorities arrived and arrested Tuck
on a departure order.

"I would not believe it unless I had seen it," Cowan said.

"They sent people in to arrest him while he was on a gurney. They
took him out of the hospital in handcuffs, put him in an SUV, and
drove him to the border."

He was turned over to Whatcom County Jail officials, who, after being
flooded with phone calls from activists, called federal marshals from
Seattle to pick him up.

The marshals brought him to the King County Jail in downtown Seattle.