A groundbreaking step in Suraj's case!

There has been a landmark step in Suraj's case.
The following report will be provided by the attorneys.

(We are still accepting petitions for the early prosecution of the Suraj case. Download →Here←)

————————————————————
Suraj's trial progress report
April 18, 2011
Attorneys Kentaro Iida and Ryoko Minagawa

On March 31, 2011, the Tokyo High Court made a groundbreaking decision, ordering the government to disclose the report detailing the circumstances surrounding Suraj's death.

Suraj died during deportation on March 22, 2010. It is suspected that immigration officials may have placed a towel in Suraj's mouth or used a gag on him. If this is true, the actions of the immigration officials should not be tolerated. Suraj's wife decided to file a claim for state compensation. However, despite repeated requests from the government by Suraj's wife and his legal team to clarify the truth, the government never explained the details of what happened at the time, and never disclosed a report detailing the circumstances of Suraj's death.

So on September 24, 2010, the defense team asked the court to examine the report as evidence in advance. This procedure is called evidence preservation procedure. It was finally decided to open evidence preservation procedure on December 6. During the New Year holidays, the defense team went to the Ministry of Justice together with the judge to persuade the government to disclose the report. However, the government still did not disclose the report. The defense team also asked the court to force the government to disclose the report, but the court refused, saying that "documents related to criminal procedures are not suitable for disclosure orders." This decision was made immediately after the documents of 10 immigration officials were finally referred to the prosecutor's office on December 28, 2010, in connection with Suraj's death.

The defense team then appealed against the court's decision to the Tokyo High Court, which handed down the decision mentioned at the beginning of this article. The Tokyo High Court severely criticized the government's response thus far, saying that "even though a year has passed, they have not even provided a detailed explanation of the circumstances surrounding Suraj's death," and "Despite promising to set up a consultation desk, they have not made any contact," and ordered the disclosure of the report.

Once this report is made public, we will know what happened on the day Suraj died. With this, we have finally taken the first step towards a lawsuit for state compensation. However, the evidence is still insufficient. The government says it has submitted a videotape of the entire incident surrounding Suraj's death to the investigative authorities. The legal team intends to continue working to uncover the truth, including urging the prosecutor to proceed with the investigation.