Belaruses Japanese sentences for seven years to spy

Moscow: A Court in Belarus has sentenced a Japanese citizen seven years in prison for espionage, prosecutors said on Monday (March 17), in a mysterious case that the officials of the Russian allied country have not explained completely.

The man, identified by prosecutors as Nakanishi Masatoshi, was arrested in July 2024, but Minsk announced the arrest only last September.

An Minsk court found him guilty of “espionage activity,” said the office of the Attorney General.

He said that the Court condemned him for cooperating with a “Special Agency for Service, Security and Intelligence of a foreign State, which imply actions with the aim of damaging national security” of Belarus.

Prosecutors said the man carried out espionage between 2018 and 2024.

Belarus announced his arrest in a state television report last September that called him a “agent of the Earth of the Ascending Sun”, with the country’s KGB intelligence service accusing him of collecting military information.

The report says that he took photos of military facilities, as well as rail infrastructure, and that he had traveled to the Ukrainian border.

He showed images of masked men with simple clothes that took him to a truck during his arrest.

The report also described it as a lawyer.

Belarus, governed by President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994, is a nearby ally of Moscow and has close links with Beijing.

Japan confirmed the arrest at that time, saying that he was doing everything possible to help man.