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Japanese Officer Nabbed on Suspicion of Passing Secrets to Russia
Japanese police on Friday arrested a senior officer of Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) for allegedly passing defense secrets to a Russian military attache in Tokyo, Kyodo News reported.
The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and Kanagawa prefectural police arrested Shigehiro Hagisaki, a lieutenant commander and researcher at the National Institute for Defense Studies of Japan's Defense Agency, on suspicion of violating the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) Law, which prohibits SDF members from divulging classified security information, the report said.
Meanwhile, a Russian Embassy official in Tokyo was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying that the arrest is a provocation.
"We regard the incident as a provocation with the aim to undermine all positive achievements in the bilateral relations for the past few years," the official said.
The MPD and Kanagawa police raided four locations, including the institute in Tokyo's Meguro Ward and Hagisaki's home in Setagaya Ward, seizing several hundred items.
Police said Hagisaki gave the Russian military attache information about the MSDF on about 10 occasions from September 1999 to last month.
Hagisaki, 38, basically admitted the allegations, Kyodo quoted police as saying.
Hagisaki was dined and wined in return for handing over classified documents, and is suspected of receiving money as well, the police said.
After graduating from the National Defense Academy in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, in 1986, Hagisaki served aboard destroyers and support craft. Fluent in Russian, he had also worked in the MSDF's documentation division, which deals with information on foreign defense.
Hagisaki had been working at the institute as an expert on Russia since the end of March this year after completing a master's course on security at the academy.
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