GREENPEACE'S WHALE BACON THEFT

C O N F I D E N T I A L TOKYO 001677 SIPDIS DEPT FOR ATTORNEY/ADVISOR KIETH BENES, MOJ INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS BLAIR BURMAN, DAVE WARNER E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/23/2019 TAGS: AORC ECON EFIS PGOV PHSA PHUM JA SUBJECT: GREENPEACE'S WHALE BACON THEFT Classified By: CDA J. P. Zumwalt per reasons (1.4b, d) ¶1. (SBU) BACKGROUND: While investigating allegations that Japan's "scientific whaling" was a cover for commercial whaling activities Greenpeace activists Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki seized a box of whalemeat (labeled as "cardboard") on May 15, 2008, held a press conference to release their findings, and delivered this box and other evidence they had gathered to the Tokyo Public Prosecutor to request an investigation. On June 20, 2008, the same day the Tokyo Prosecutor announced he was dropping an investigation into the embezzlement charges alleged by Greenpeace, Sato and Suzuki instead were arrested, and their homes and Greenpeace offices were raided by 75 policemen. ¶2. (SBU) UPDATE: Embassy Tokyo political officer met with defendants Sato and Suzuki at the office of their lawyer Yuichi Kaido. Following the urgings of the judges at the second pre-trial hearing on July 17 that the issue of whale meat embezzlement not be excluded, the prosecutor disclosed a total of 26 depositions to the defense, including from crewmembers on the whaling ship, as well as officials from the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICT),the Fisheries Agency of Japan, and Kyodo Senpaku, the company that runs Japan's whaling fleet. The defense also filed a Freedom of Information Act request and received some documents which were, however, almost entirely blacked-out. Attorney Kaido stated that the next pre-trial hearing scheduled for August 4 would be "critical" as it would determine whether the embezzlement charges would be heard or not. ¶3. (SBU) Kaido said that the two defendants were acting on information provided by whistle-blowers on the factory ship, and that the whale meat taken (approximately 23.5 kg of salt-dried "unesu" or whale-bacon) was "not with the intent of appropriating the property to themselves" and as such was not a crime under Japanese law. "Moreover," he added, "Articles 2 and 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Japan is a signatory to, clearly prevents a government from using the threat of criminal prosecution and prison sentences to silence its critics." ¶4. (C) Asked why 75 policeman were called in to arrest the two defendants as well as raid their homes and Greenpeace offices for what sounded like at best a petty crime, Sato replied, "You don't understand, for Japanese nationalists whaling is the 'Yasukuni' of the sea." (NOTE: Yasukuni is the shrine to Japan's war dead, beloved by nationalists but controversial for interring the souls of Class A war criminals. END NOTE) Suzuki elaborated, "It's not just an emotional issue, there is also money involved. We called our operation 'Silver Bullet' because we were trying to kill this zombie company that only survives because of its political and bureaucratic connections." The two defendants went on to describe their time in pre-trial detention including interrogation sessions lasting up to eight hours while handcuffed to a chair. The interrogating officer tried to get the defendants to accept allegations that Greenpeace was similar to Aum Shinri Kyo, the religious group responsible for the 1995 Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Kaido also added that he has taken video depositions from the whistleblower(s),but they are otherwise keeping quiet out of fear for their lives feeling the situation on the factory ships is "a lot like 'Kani Kosen'." (NOTE: 'Kani Kosen' ('Crab Factory Ship') is the most famous example of proletariat fiction in Japanese literature, describing as it does horrific conditions for workers on Japanese factory ships in the 1920s. END NOTE). ¶5. (C) Spokesperson Frode Pleym, of Greenpeace Nordic, who was also present at the meeting, asked for USG help on three issues: 1) serving as observers at the trial, 2) raising the issue within the UN system and in cooperation with other Missions, to the host government, and 3) an invitation for one or both of the defendants to the United States to provide an in-person briefing to the Department of State. ZUMWALT