UPDATE: Marc Emery will be flown to Detroit Tuesday and enter Canada that same day, his wife Jodie confirmed to CBC Sunday.
Canada’s so-called “Prince of Pot” is finally coming home after serving five-year sentence in a U.S. prison.
Marc Emery will “walk across [the border] a completely free man" with "no restrictions" as early as Tuesday, his wife Jodie Emery told The Huffington Post Canada on Friday.
Vancouver-based Emery was extradited in 2010 on American charges that he sold marijuana seeds across the border via his mail-order company. He eventually pleaded guilty to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and was sentenced by a U.S. district court in Seattle.
At the time, the U.S. government labelled him as drug dealer and “the largest supplier of marijuana seeds in the U.S."
Jodie Emery said on Friday that her husband was told by an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer he would be released this week, but admitted it "isn't 100 per cent" as official flight schedules are not disclosed.
“On the U.S. side, the U.S. marshals will have paper work, the Canadian consulate's travel document that they prepared for Marc, the immigration and custom enforcement paperwork,” said Jodie, explaining the process Marc is expected to go through next week.
“And the U.S. marshals will take Marc to the Canadian border crossing and say 'Here we have a deportee, here is his paperwork, you deal with him. He's yours.'”
The couple plan to embark on a cross-Canada tour beginning Sept. 8 with the goal to unseat the Conservative government in next year’s election.
“The intent will be to impress upon the Canadian cannabis culture to get out and vote – and vote against the currently-governing prohibitionist Conservative party,” Marc wrote in a January blog post from prison.
But the couple's post-prison honeymoon may be short-lived.
The 56-year-old's return comes just as federal parties are ramping up their election campaign rhetoric and assembling party platforms; opposition parties may be weary of tying themselves to high-profile pot activists like the Emerys.
“Political parties, don’t as a rule like to be associated with controversial figures, especially those who have served jail time,” political strategist Marcel Wieder told CBC News.
The Emerys plan to hold a press conference in Toronto Wednesday and another in Vancouver on August 17.
A party will also be thrown outside Cannabis Culture headquarters in Vancouver’s Victory Square to celebrate Marc’s return to Canada.
With files from Althia Raj
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