MONTREAL, March 26 (UPI) -- An appeals judge in India ordered a Canadian businessman freed from jail Wednesday, 10 months after he was arrested on expired visa charges.
A CTV News correspondent in Motihari reported 42-year-old Saul Itzhayek would begin his trip home to Montreal late Wednesday after a judge reduced his sentence to time served.
Itzhayek was arrested May 29, 2007, when he crossed into India from Nepal with an expired visa in the Indian state of Bihar, the report said. He had first traveled to India, then Nepal on business.
Before he was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, Itzhayek was in a single cell with 130 other prisoners, The Gazette newspaper in Montreal reported.
After the judge's ruling, Canadian High Commission officials began arranging travel for him, CTV said.
The Canadian government is also negotiating to free a woman held in a Mexican prison without trial for two years and to gain clemency for a young Montreal man sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia.
