Former Okinawa military base worker charged with rape and murder
The case has intensified long-standing local opposition to US military presence on the Japanese island.
Japanese prosecutors on Thursday charged a US military base employee with the alleged rape and murder of a local woman on the southern island of Okinawa, media reported.
Kenneth Franklin Shinzato, 32, a former US marine employed at the US Air Force’s sprawling Kadena Air Base, was first charged in early June for allegedly disposing of the body of the victim, identified by local media as Rina Shimabukuro.
As is common practice in Japanese law, he was again charged by Okinawa prosecutors, this time for the separate crime of the alleged rape and murder of the 20-year-old woman, Jiji Press and other news reports said. Prosecutors and court officials in Okinawa refused to confirm the reports.
The case has intensified long-standing local opposition to the American military presence on the strategic island, which reluctantly hosts nearly 75 per cent of land alloted for US bases in Japan even though it accounts for just a fraction of the country’s total area.