Japanese courts convict two right-wing anti-China activists

Two Japanese were convicted on September 6 by local courts of Yokohama and Nagasaki of using frangible grenade and blackmail. They were sentenced to three year and six months' imprisonment and eight months' imprisonment with a suspended sentence of three years respectively.

Court in Yokohama says on the morning of April 20, 2005, Katsunori Kawabe, member of a right-wing organization, lit a bottle filled with gasoline and threw it at the gate of the Yokohama branch of Construction Bank of China. He also took drug in a right-wing organization's office in Yokosuka. The court handed him three years and six months' prison term sentence for the two crimes.

On the same day the Nagasaki court sentenced a jobless Japanese Mitsuhiro Naito to eight months' imprisonment suspended on probation for a period of three years for blackmail. In this April Naito mailed threatening letters containing razor blade to the Chinese consulate-generals in Nagasaki and Osaka. The prosecutor said the crime may worsen China-Japan relations therefore must be punished.

By People's Daily Online