Japan slams UN panel report saying Carlos Ghosn’s arrest and detention violated rights
- Tokyo’s move to detain the ex-Nissan boss four times was ‘fundamentally unfair’ and he deserves reparations, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said
- Japan said the report was ‘not based on accurate understanding of the country’s criminal justice system’
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.
“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.