Public Prosecutors Were Indicted

President of a solar power generation firm filed a lawsuit against the government of Japan, arguing that he was insulted by the public prosecutors with Tokyo district office during investigation. The plaintiff claims that the prosecutors oppressed him with inappropriate words in the interviews, calling the action a violation of human rights by denial of his personality.

The plaintiff is Naoyuki Ikuta, the president of TechnoSystems, Inc, which runs business of solar power generation. Ikuta was arrested and indicted with suspicion of fraud by Special Investigation Division of Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office in 2021. Ikuta was indicted with charge of falsely receiving 2.2 billion yen by submitting wrong estimate for solar power generation projects to the financial institutes.

 

The court has not started trial, even though it received the indictment. Ikuta is still in detention. According to the claims of Ikuta, the prosecutors had interviewed Ikuta for 41 consecutive days, which amounted to 205 hours. Since the interviews were recorded, Ikuta is going to request the government of Japan to submit the recorded voices and video film to the court as the evidence.

 

Ikuta argues that the interview was totally insulting, despite he declared to exercise his right of silence. The words used by the prosecutors include follows: “99 percent of criminal cases are guilty. This case will be 100 percent guilty,” “Opposing to public prosecutors office means anti-social,” “Everyone including your families will be unhappy if you make lies to us,” and “Enough is enough. Even a kid would not do such a thing. It’s only the boss of mafia to do such a thing.” All those utterances were made in Kansai accent.

 

Ikuta argues that those interviews for seeking confession gave him heavy psychological pain, and harmed his personality. Article 13 of the Constitution of Japan stipulates that all the people are respected as individuals. A lawyer of Ikuta argued that the prosecutors did not improve the treatment of Ikuta and continued that harsh interview, regardless their demand to stop it.

 

The plaintiff recognizes that insultation as a nature of public prosecutors, which has been occupying most cases of false criminal indictment in Japan. Criminal investigation should be made based on evidences. When they cannot put enough evidences together, the public prosecutors in Japan tend to rely on confession of suspect. It may cause false accusation, significantly violating human rights.

 

Japan Federation of Bar Associations issued a resolution in 1981 that fatally wrong indictments and court decisions stemmed from empty confessions, and those empty confessions were made from wrong investigation in early stage and secrecy of interviews.

 

In the case of Atsuko Muraki, former officer in Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare who was arrested by Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office in 2009, it was found that the prosecutors coerced confession on Muraki and even fabricated evidence. The nature of public prosecutors has not changed much.

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