Excessive Investigation Was Accused

 Tokyo District Court decided that the arresting and indicting the president of a manufacturing company were illegal and ordered Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the government of Japan to pay ¥160 million of compensation. The court found that the suspicion on the company had been baseless and caused by insufficient investigation. The case represents excessive rigidity of law enforcement and public prosecutors in Japan, which independently act with monopolized power of investigation. 

Masaaki Ohkawara, the president of a precision machinery company Ohkawara Kakohki, and his advisor, Shizuo Aijima, were arrested in 2020 by Tokyo Metropolitan Police and indicted by Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office with suspicion of illegal export of spray dryers, which could be developed into biological weapons, to China and Republic of Korea. The police and prosecutors thought the export had not been approved by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and against Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act.

 

METI has a regulation on exporting a spray dryer which has capability of sterilize inside the machine. With consultation with METI, the police decided that Ohkawara’s machine violated that regulation. However, the police had heard from Aijima before arresting him that the machine could not be heated to the temperature enough for sterilization.

 

The court accused the police of not having an experiment for reconfirming whether the machine could raise the temperature enough, saying “they could have easily found out that the machine did not have sterilizing capability.” The indictment by the prosecutors was also regarded illegal with the same reason. It was highly unusual that an indictment by public prosecutors was found illegal in a trial seeking the compensation of national government.

 

The court also found that the police officer fabricated documents, which recorded the interview to one of the suspects, as if the suspect had misunderstood the meaning of “sterilization” and failed in correcting the description. During the detention, Aijima died with stomach cancer without having sufficient medical care. The prosecutors office withdrew the indictment after Aijima died. The court ordered both governments to compensate to the families of Aijima.

 

It was a serious error of omission in the investigation. There have been opportunities for thinking twice and retreat from arrest and indictment. Some police people indicated the fabrication in the investigation. Someone with METI had told the police about possibility that the machine would not be violating the regulation. Nevertheless, the police and the public prosecutors refused turning their views around.

 

It is called “hostage jurisdiction,” in which the police or public prosecutors take a suspect with denial in custody for a long period of time. The problem of hostage jurisdiction was raised in the case of former CEO of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, arrested in 2018. One of the reasons for that excessive tendency is recognized as the tendency of investigation highly dependent on confession of the suspect. The police and public prosecutors need to focus more on scientific evidences and exclude the motivation of face-saving on their own.

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