Japanese man arrested in Belarus on charges of acting as special services agent

TALLINN, Estonia — A Japanese man has been arrested in Belarus and is facing charges of working for Japan's special services by photographing military and civilian infrastructure near the border with Ukraine.

A report on Belarusian state TV on Thursday said suspect Masatoshi Nakanishi was arrested in July. and faces seven years in prison if convicted.

The TV report said Nakanishi took 9,000 photographs of military installations, airfields, railway lines, bridges and other infrastructure in the Belarusian-Ukrainian border area. Nakanishi had lived in Gomel, Belarus' second-largest city, near the border, since 2018 and taught Japanese at a local university, the report said.

Belarus has been a staging point for Russian troops in the war in Ukraine, but Belarus has not sent its own troops into Ukraine.

The state TV report showed Nakanishi confessing and showing some places he had photographed. Belarusian TV has frequently shown reports of criminal confessions and statements of regret that are widely regarded as made under duress.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said Friday that Japan’s government protested to Belarus' foreign ministry regarding the report.

Hayashi said the report contained “materials considered to be problematic from the perspective of human rights protection of this man.”