現在地 HOME > 掲示板
> 日本の事件13 > 1037.html
★阿修羅♪
|
現在地 HOME > 掲示板
> 日本の事件13 > 1037.html
★阿修羅♪
|
|
| Tweet |
(回答先: アルカイダとイスラム教徒境界線は？『反米』で決めつけ傾向[東京新聞／特報] 投稿者 なるほど 日時 2004 年 7 月 28 日 18:31:49)
Asia Letter: He isn't from Al Qaeda, but who would know?
Norimitsu Onishi IHT
Thursday, August 12, 2004
TOKYO In May, an immigrant from Bangladesh, Mohamed Himu Islam, was arrested, along with four other Muslim foreigners living here, for allegedly having ties to Al Qaeda.
Most of the charges amounted to nothing more than illegally staying in Japan, and none of the men - three from Bangladesh, one from Mali, one from India - came from countries famous for being factory mills for Al Qaeda membership.
Still, maybe the police knew something more, because they were clearly playing the arrests up to the Japanese media.
Accordingly, the arrests flew onto the front pages of all national newspapers and made the top news on television.
Magazines placed photos of some of the men next to those of Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda was here, or so it seemed.
Less than three months later, no one has been indicted on any Al Qaeda-related charge. Four of the men, sentenced for being in Japan without proper papers, appear to be facing deportation.
Meanwhile, Islam, also cleared of being a terrorist, is back living in his home in suburban Tokyo with his Japanese wife and their two children. With "Al Qaeda" stamped on his forehead, he is finding it impossible to rebuild his business and admits that he has even come close to committing suicide.
"I'm not Al Qaeda," Islam said. "I want to clear my name."
So far he has been unable to do so for the simple reason that the mainstream media here have almost completely ignored what happened after those arrests in May.
In the West, the media would have pounced on a similar story, especially one that the police had so hyped, with sober broadsheets dissecting the failures of the investigation and tabloids cutting to the chase with words like "botch-up" or "fiasco."
Here, there has been almost complete silence - so much so that average Japanese, while recalling the big headlines in May, are unaware that the arrested men, in fact, had nothing to do with Al Qaeda.
In a true sense, Islam found himself the victim of the collusion that exists in Japan between the authorities and the mainstream media.
A structure designed to protect the powerful while ignoring the powerless, it has allowed those who led this investigation to remain unaccountable while it nearly pushed Islam to jump off a bridge, and end what until recently had been a very happy life in Japan.
Islam's journey to Japan began in Montreal in the early 1990s, where he worked as a waiter at a Japanese restaurant called "Sakura." There, he met his future wife, Hiroko Kobayashi, who worked the cash register. Both had left their native countries a couple of years earlier.
In an interview at their apartment, Islam, 31, and Kobayashi, 37, spoke of how they chose to settle in Japan in 1995 and build a new life together. Islam switched effortlessly between English and Japanese.
After holding a series of odd jobs, Islam was introduced to the prepaid telephone card business. Almost all prepaid card users are foreigners who find them more affordable than a fixed or mobile phone, especially for overseas calls.
It is a niche business geared to the thousands of immigrants, legal and illegal alike, who provide Japan with cheap labor.
Islam eventually opened two prepaid card stores in Japan, one in Malaysia and another in Bangladesh. In Japan, he had a store in front of the U.S. military base in Yokosuka named Jhia International and his main store in Tokyo was called Ryo International. He also included "Ryo" in the names of his stores in Bangladesh and Malaysia.
Ryo is the name of his son, now 6; his daughter, Lilica, is now 2.
At a mosque where he prayed and also looked for prepaid card customers, Islam met the man who would lead him to his present predicament: Lionel Dumont, or Samir, as he was known in the Muslim community in Japan.
Dumont, a French citizen of Algerian descent, had been convicted of attacks and robberies as part of an Islamic militant gang in France and had been sentenced, in absentia, to life in prison.
Dumont, with suspected ties to Al Qaeda, had been living in Japan for several years, until at least September 2003.
As Samir, he became an on-and-off buyer of prepaid cards, just one in Islam's growing list of clients. Islam said he had not thought of him at all until last May when the man appeared suddenly on Japanese television.
Dumont, who had been arrested in Germany last December, was extradited to France in May. It was then revealed that he had been living for several years in Japan.
The revelation embarrassed the Japanese government, which had committed itself 100 percent to President George W. Bush's war on terror. It was particularly humiliating for the police authorities, who had set up antiterrorism task forces after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In the blinding media spotlight following the arrests, Islam was portrayed as the ringleader. The daily Yomiuri newspaper wrote, "behind the face of a businessman, did he also have another face as a supporter of terrorism?"
It also speculated that Islam had sent money to his country to support Islamic radicals.
In none of the newspapers was any police official quoted by name as making the accusations. All the information was clearly handed out in cozy press clubs, where the rules are mostly no name, no attribution - and no accountability.
After 43 days in jail, Islam was finally freed. His only sentence was to pay a $3,000 fine for employing two illegal foreign residents at his business, including his younger brother, Ahmed Faishal, 26, who was also arrested in May and now faces deportation.
But because his release and the lack of Al Qaeda-related convictions in the other four cases were all but ignored here, Islam was still branded as an Al Qaeda member.
He could not rebuild his business, which had collapsed during his imprisonment.
One evening he became so desperate that he stood on a bridge over the Arakawa River and stopped himself from jumping only when his son called him on his mobile phone and asked him what time he would be home for dinner.
Eventually, through the help of a Bangladeshi journalist here, Islam held a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan to clear his name.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police released a written response to the press that was attributed to Seizo Sakai, the director of the third division of foreign affairs: "We investigated in a fair manner the case based on Japanese laws."
The newspapers ran tiny articles on Islam's news conference, burying them in the back pages.
He was particularly angry at one television network that ignored his conference but ran a segment on a monkey that, after suffering from an accident, had begun walking upright just like a human being.
"That monkey had the right to be on TV, but not me," Islam said. "I don't think I'm considered human here, because if I were human, I'd have human rights."
He continued: "I want Ryo to become a famous lawyer so that no law will run away from him. I'll wait 20 to 30 years, it's O.K. I'll relieve my pain then. He will clear my name and say that his father is not Al Qaeda."
Norimitsu Onishi can be reached at pagetwo@iht.com.
http://www.kniff.de/cgi-bin/cgiproxy/nph-proxy.cgi/010110A/http/www.iht.com/articles/533599.htm
題名には必ず「阿修羅さんへ」と記述してください。