Japan has condemned as “totally unacceptable” a UN panel’s report that said fugitive ex-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn’s detention for almost 130 days in a Japanese jail was neither necessary nor reasonable, and violated his rights. The decision to arrest Ghosn four times in a row so as to extend his detention was “fundamentally unfair” and represented an “extrajudicial abuse of process that can have no legal basis under international law”, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said in a report on Monday posted on its website. It added that Ghosn’s bail conditions had been “unusually strict”, especially during the second period when he was barred from all contact with his wife, other than through lawyers. Americans accused in Ghosn escape can be extradited to Japan, court rules “The appropriate remedy would be to accord Mr Ghosn an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law,” said the group, which has no power to compel states to follow its rulings, but whose decisions carry reputational weight. In response, Japan’s foreign ministry criticised the report as containing “obvious factual errors”, such as the amount of time Ghosn had spent in detention without being brought before a judge. It also defended the decision by authorities not to cooperate in the group’s investigation on the grounds that doing so might violate the rights of those involved. Japan “deeply regrets that the Working Group continued to consider the case and rendered opinions based on limited information and biased allegations from the source, not based on accurate understanding of Japan’s criminal justice system”, the foreign ministry said. It added: “Flight from a criminal trial, in violation of the conditions a defendant promised to respect upon his or her release on bail, is not condoned under any nation’s legal system.” The working group’s findings, it warned, could “encourage those who would stand criminal trial to entertain the idea that flight can be justified and prevent the realisation of justice and the proper functioning of the criminal justice system in each country”. US says Ghosn’s son sent US$500k in cryptocurrency for Japan escape Ghosn and an aide, former Nissan director Greg Kelly, were arrested in Tokyo on November 19, 2018, and accused of under-reporting the former chairman’s compensation. Both have denied wrongdoing. Additional charges were filed later accusing Ghosn of using company assets improperly, which he has also denied. Brazilian-born Ghosn, who also holds French and Lebanese citizenship, made a daring escape from Japan to Lebanon hidden inside a large box aboard a private jet last December. It was, as Ghosn argued defiantly in Beirut later, the only way for him to avoid what he called trumped-up charges of financial misdeeds concocted with the help of his former Nissan colleagues. Kelly appeared in court on Tuesday in the latest hearing of his trial, where he pleaded not guilty. His son, Kevin Kelly, said in a Facebook post that while his father’s case was not specifically addressed in the UN working group’s report, Greg Kelly underwent similar treatment at the hands of Japanese prosecutors. “My father was not included in the filing and therefore not mentioned in the finding, but his treatment was the same as Mr Ghosn for less charges,” he said. “Unsurprisingly, the Japanese government denounced the report as a ‘totally unacceptable’ viewpoint that will change nothing in the country’s legal process, so our family does not expect anything to change.” Carlos Ghosn’s escape jet from Japan used illegally, Turkish firm says Go Ito, a professor of politics and international relations at Tokyo’s Meiji University, said that despite the robust defence of its legal system, Japan appeared to be in a difficult position. “Japan obviously has its own laws on how suspects in criminal cases can be held and treated, and nothing has been done that contravenes those laws, but other countries have different standards of what is acceptable,” he said. “The problem for Japan is that the UN has effectively declared that Japan’s standards for the treatment of suspects is similar to that of an underdeveloped nation, and that will hurt.” Additional reporting by AFP and Bloomberg