Nick Baker case: the final leg

10.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 20th Jul 2005

On Thursday 21st July 2005, summing-up will take place on the appeal hearings at the Tokyo High Court in the case of British prisoner Nick Baker who was sentenced to 14 years for drug smuggling.

The appeal decision, expected in September, will come well over 3 years since Nick was arrested. He has consistently protested his innocence, maintaining that he was duped by a travelling companion.

Liberal Democrat European justice spokeswoman Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP has campaigned since 2002 on behalf of Nick Baker. She went to Tokyo in 2003 with Sabine Zanker of Fair Trials Abroad in the attempt to get him a fair trial. She says:

"Nick's conviction was unfair. His original interrogation, trial and subsequent conviction were a legal farce, lacking all the safeguards one would expect in a civilised country. The fact that there is a 99% conviction rate suggests that the defence in Japan faces great obstacles."

At first, the appeals hearings were no better but there has been marked improvement over the past few months, with Nick's defence appearing to be being given the attention it deserves.

"I have some hope now that justice will finally be done for Nick. His physical health and mental strength have been wrecked. He has been kept in solitary confinement, is forced to sit on cold floors all day and has suffered frost bite to his hands and feet. He needs now to come home and be with his family."

"I have been extremely disappointed that the UK government has not done more on this case, nor for other Britons held in prison in Japan."

Nick's mother, Iris Baker, will travel to Tokyo for the summing-up. Her request for an extended visa was denied by the Japanese authorities and she will only be allowed three half-hour sessions with Nick while she is in the country.

At a press conference in January 2005, Nick's lawyer Mr Miyake said he believed there was a 50-50 chance that Nick's original sentence would be overturned.

Notes:

Nick Baker was arrested in Tokyo in April 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 by his travel companion into carrying the bag in which more than 40,000 ecstasy tablets and nearly a kilogram of cocaine were found. The prosecution acknowledges the bag was not Nick's.

Nick's trial was not a fair one. 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. Interpretation was totally inadequate and he was made to sign a witness statement in Japanese, a language he does not understand. Vital evidence was ignored, such as the activities and record of the travel companion. In Japan, criminal cases have a 99% conviction rate. The judge who presided over the court that found Nick guilty has not acquitted a single defendant in over 10 years. In June 2003, Nick was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years in prison with forced labour, largely on the basis of the testimony that he protests was inaccurately translated. (At his appeal, a Japanese professor of linguistics has stated that the court's translation of Nick's evidence substantially deviated from what he said, and put him in a negative light).

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. Nick is not allowed to keep his asthma inhaler in his cell, and so has to call for a guard every time he has an asthma attack, even if he can't breathe.

The appeal hearings have also been dogged by inadequacies. At the first one in March 2004, 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 that the translator had 'resigned' and as there was no replacement, the hearing would be cancelled. At the October 2004 hearing, the police officer who arrested Nick was cross-examined by the defence. In response to specific questions, 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.

At a press conference in January 2005, Nick's lawyer Mr Miyake said he believed there was a 50-50 chance that Nick's original sentence would be overturned.

Related Link:

Further details of Nick's case can be found on the Fair Trials Abroad website.