The wife of a US Navy officer recently transferred to US custody after being jailed in Japan called on President Joe Biden and the Department of Justice to support his release.
Lt. Ridge Alkonis was booked into a federal prison in Lost Angeles last week after having served time in a Japanese prison, where he was sentenced to three years for negligent driving that resulted in the deaths of two people and injuries to a third person in May 2021. Alkonis, who was stationed in Japan, said he suffered from acute mountain sickness as he was driving with his family from Mount Fuji, which caused him to lose consciousness. That argument was rejected by the court and his appeal was denied in July 2022.
“Every morning my children wake up, they are paying the price of the US-Japan alliance. He should not be in prison right now, he could be home,” Brittany Alkonis told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead” Monday. “If DOJ and if the president wanted him to be home, he would be home and he could be home for Christmas.”
The Department of Justice declined to comment. CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
A US official previously told CNN that Alkonis had been remanded to US custody after direct engagement by Vice President Kamala Harris and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and was being brought back to the US under an international prisoner convention that allows individuals to serve the remainder of their confinement in their home country.
Alkonis, the official said, will “go before an entity called the US parole commission within the Department of Justice, which will consider his case and make a determination about further confinement.”
That process could take several months, a DOJ official said. The parole commission will look at Alkonis’ prison sentence in Japan and determine what would have been done in the US, and then…
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