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Mr. Biden,

My name is Peter Ianello. Joe Scoby, who is copied on this email, and I have been close friends for many years. I will make this brief but I am available to go into greater detail on the matter at any time.

The person who I am writing about is Marty O'Connor. I have known Marty for almost 40 years. His dad, Ed O'Connor, was one of my business partners and a very close friend of my family. As background, Ed O'Connor, who is no longer with us, was one of the founders of the Chicago Board Options Exchange and a giant in the financial industry in the United States for some 50 years.

Marty was detained along with his wife, Maureen, at the Istanbul, Turkey airport on Thursday Nov. 20th as they were preparing to return to Chicago because they were found to have a decorative dagger that the authorities needed to have examined by a museum to determine if it was an antiquity. It is a crime to take an antiquity from Turkey. Marty, thinking that this was nothing more than just waiting for the dagger to be examined and he would be shortly on his way, told Maureen to take the flight home and he would get the next flight as soon as this was resolved. The authorities had a museum examine the dagger and they declared it an "historical antiquity."

On Tuesday of that week Marty and his wife went to the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul and while there he purchased the decorative dagger for $500. The merchant mentioned that he had other items that were not for sale because they could not be taken out of Turkey because they were considered antiquities indicating to Marty and Maureen that he was knowledgeable about the law and that the item they purchased was just an ordinary item.

On Friday, after the dagger was declared an antiquity, Marty was taken before a judge who said that he must stand trial for this offense. At that hearing, the merchant who sold the dagger to Marty appeared with a lawyer that he brought along for Marty. The merchant testified that the dagger was not an antiquity and he showed the judge a receipt for $500 implying that an antiquity would never be sold for that little amount of money.

The judge said that Marty had until Tuesday, Nov. 25th to file an appeal which if granted would allow Marty to stay in a residence in Istanbul rather than wait in jail for the trial. We have retained counsel in Istanbul recommended by the law firm of Baker & McKenzie.

I don't know how to not make this sound like a cliche but this is an innocent man who is sitting in a jail in Turkey wondering what just happened to him. His wife and children are living a nightmare and his friends, like myself, feel helpless. We would greatly appreciate it if you could inform the State Department of this situation so that they might be able to aid us in getting the authorities to understand what is the truth and/or at the very least insure Marty's safety while he is being held in Istanbul.

Thank you,
Peter


Peter