High Court orders Japan, Tokyo Govts to compensate over probe

The amount of damages was up by about 4 million yen from the lower court ruling.

The plaintiffs included the company based in Yokohama, near Tokyo, CEO Masaaki Okawara, 76, former executive Junji Shimada, 72, and the family of former adviser Shizuo Aishima, who died at the age of 72 in February 2021 after being found to have stomach cancer while being detained.

Okawara, Shimada and Aishima were initially arrested in March 2020 by Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department. The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors' Office later indicted them and the company on charges of illegally exporting a spray dryer that might be repurposed to make biological weapons, though the charges were withdrawn in July 2021.

Teruyoshi Ota, presiding judge at the high court, accepted the illegality of the investigations by the MPD and the prosecutor's office, following the December 2023 ruling by the Tokyo District Court.

He judged that the interpretation by the MPD's Public Security Bureau of import regulations prescribed in the industry ministry's ordinance "lacked rationality."

The judge also said that although it was reasonable to interpret the regulations in line with international standards, the MPD arrested them without conducting additional investigations even after it had been told by the ministry to reconsider its interpretation of the regulations.

He criticised "fundamental problems" in the judgements of the bureau, concluding, like the lower court, that the "arrests lacked reasonable grounds."

The judge also found that the interrogation of Shimada was illegal because a fraudulent method was used to get him to sign a written statement in line with the assumption of the investigative authorities.

He also ruled that the indictment by the prosecutor's office was illegal, saying that if a normally required investigation had been carried out, the prosecutors could have obtained evidence that the company's spray dryer was not subject to the regulations.

In December 2023, the district court ordered the central and metropolitan governments to pay a total of some 162 million yen in compensation. Both plaintiffs and defendants challenged the district court ruling.

 [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]