Injustice prolonged of Japan trial for Briton Nick Baker

12.00.00am GMT Mon 6th Dec 2004

Nick Baker, a British prisoner convicted of drug smuggling after an unfair trial and sentenced to 14 years in a Japanese jail, will have his first chance to put his side of his appeal at the next hearing on 7th December.

This is almost a year after the appeal was launched. His family are increasingly concerned for his mental and physical health, as he sits out the excruciatingly slow appeals process in hard prison conditions.

Baroness Sarah Ludford, London MEP and Liberal Democrat European justice spokeswoman, has supported Nick Baker throughout and flew to Tokyo in 2003 with Sabine Zanker of Fair Trials Abroad in the attempt to get him a fair trial.

Sarah Ludford said: "A British citizen continues to suffer a gross miscarriage of justice. The original trial was a legal farce and the appeals hearings are no better."

"The fate of Nick Baker will be on the conscience of the Japanese legal system but also the passive UK government if this situation does not improve."

At Nick's first appeal hearing in March, the court translator was inaudible as she read through the defence argument; the judge instructed her stop before the end as the session had run out of time. In response to critical comments about this translator on the Justice for Nick Baker website, the Tokyo High Court informed Nick's legal team two days before the second hearing was due that the translator had 'resigned' and as there was no replacement, the second hearing would be cancelled.

At the appeal hearing in October, the police officer who arrested Nick was cross-examined by the defence. In response to many specific questions from the defence, Officer Kawashima, who was in charge of the customs seizure and who signed the confiscation report replied "I don't remember" 46 times on the witness stand."

Sarah Ludford said, "These unsatisfactory events are perverting the course of justice. At the December hearing, the defence will question Nick himself and nothing must interfere with this being done to proper standards."

Shunji Miyake, Nick Baker's lawyer and a member of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, has said of the secretive Japanese criminal justice system "If we win this [case], it will force them to change the system."

Note to editors

1. Nick Baker was arrested in Tokyo in 2002 on drug-smuggling charges. He was convicted after being interrogated for 23 days without a lawyer at the end of which he signed a document which was not translated and which he therefore didn't understand. He asserts his innocence, alleging he was duped.

Nick's trial was marked by an absence of safeguards expected in a civilised country. Not only was there was no lawyer present for three weeks of interrogation and no taping of interviews, but also he was held for 10 months in solitary confinement for protesting his innocence. Most crucially for the defence, vital evidence was ignored.

2. In Japan, criminal cases have a 99.9% conviction rate. The judge who presided over the court that found Nick Baker guilty has not acquitted a single defendant in over 10 years.

Prison conditions are extremely hard and are run with an elaborate system of punishments. Since his arrest nearly two years ago, Nick has not been allowed to make a phone call home; he is forced to sit cross legged on a concrete floor for endless hours and, due to the lack of heating, he suffers from frostbite to his fingers and feet.

3. Further details about Nick Baker's case can be found on the Fair Trials Abroad website: www.fairtrialsabroad.org. He was Fair Trials Abroad's 'Prisoner of the Month' in March 2004.