Fugitive Nick Alahverdian tells Scottish court: "my mental health is deteriorating."
A crying and agitated Nicholas Alahverdian pleaded for bail in a Scottish courtroom Thursday, claiming he was dying from prison mistreatment while being held as a wanted fugitive.
He has been charged in Utah with two rapes and sexual battery.
Appearing by video link from Her Majesty's Prison in Edinburgh, the former Rhode Islander, who faked his death in 2020, could be heard saying through an oxygen mask as he sat in a wheelchair: “I’m dying and nothing is being done. I’m being tortured. My wife knows and she’s seen it.
“My mental health is deteriorating and I’m hallucinating. I’m seeing things that I’ve never seen before.”
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The latest extradition hearing began with Alahverdian, 35, coughing and weeping on screen, reported The Independent newspaper and other Scottish media outlets.
Alahverdian, who says he's a victim of mistaken identity – fingerprints, photographs and tattoos have proven otherwise, authorities say – was arrested in December in a Glasgow hospital where he was on a ventilator from COVID-19.
Charges and accusations against Nicholas Alahverdian
Before staging his death in February 2020, Alahverdian told The Journal he had renounced his citizenship and fled the United States – not to avoid the law, but to avoid people he refused to identify whom he said were threatening him for his advocacy work improving Rhode Island’s child-welfare system a decade earlier.
But law-enforcement authorities were indeed on his tail, including the FBI, which alleges he took out 22 credit cards in his former foster father’s name and ran up $200,000 in fraudulent expenses.
So convinced were Utah authorities that he was alive that months after a mysterious woman claiming to be his wife “Louise” pressured Rhode Island reporters and politicians to post online tributes to her "late" husband, they issued their first warrant for his arrest.
They charged him with raping a 21-year-old woman in 2008 whom he had dated briefly.
In July: Nick Alahverdian has much to complain about from prison as extradition hearings continue
Since then, Alahverdian has been charged with raping a second Utah woman and assaulting a third – all in that same year. It was also in 2008 when he was convicted of groping a woman at an Ohio community college and ordered to register as a sex offender.
Police say between a dozen and 20 women in at least four states have accused Alahverdian of assault or harassment of some kind over the years. Many never pressed charges, authorities say, for fear of repercussions from a man with diagnosed mental- and behavioral-health issues.
Alahverdian's latest plea for bail
In court Thursday, Alahverdian’s lawyer asked that the hearing be postponed until November, pending a medical and psychological examination of his client. But a prosecutor objected to such a lengthy delay.
Alahverdian repeatedly interrupted the proceeding, saying “I need to go to hospital.” And he asked Court Sheriff Chris Dickson, overseeing the hearing, to consider granting him bail again after it was previously rescinded: “I’m not being afforded basic human rights,” Alahverdian said, “and I’m at risk of death.”
He used the media to fake his death: Now on trial, Alahverdian wants coverage stopped
Dickson instructed Alahverdian’s lawyers to make a bail request. Referring to Alahverdian by the alias he is using, Arthur Knight, the sheriff said: “I don’t want Mr. Knight to be in custody any longer than he needs to be.”
Dickson continued the hearing until Sept.15 to “see where we are at.”
As the events unfolded, Alahverdian’s current wife, Miranda, 41, sat in the courtroom watching.
They married in England one week before Alahverdian staged his death in February 2020.
While Alahverdian’s two previous wives say he terrorized them and they moved swiftly to divorce him – Pawtucket police charged him with assaulting his first wife seven days after their wedding in 2010 – Miranda Knight has literally stood by her man, often wheeling in his oxygen tank into court hearings with him when he was out on bail.
She has corroborated Alahverdian’s story of being a victim of mistaken identity, had her name attached to online campaigns to raise money for his defense – as well as to a threatening letter sent to a woman in Essex, England, who has alleged Alahverdian raped her in 2017 when he made his first apparent visit to the United Kingdom.
While her devotion to her husband has raised eyebrows with law-enforcement officials from Rhode Island to Utah, Miranda has been unwavering.
In an interview with The Journal, she said: “Since we’ve been together, he doesn't show any characteristics that frighten me. I’m a pretty strong woman. I’ve been through different long-term relationships in my life and I know what to look for, and when you make that decision to marry someone, you have to make sure you know that person inside and out.”
Email Tom Mooney at: tmooney@providencejournal.com
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Nicholas Alahverdian pleads for bail as he fights extradition to Utah
