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Japanese PM Files Libel Suit Against Magazine Over Gangster Story
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on Tuesday filed a libel suit with the Tokyo District Court against a magazine which published an article and photographs allegedly linking him to a right-wing gangster, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said Wednesday, December 13.
Mori is demanding the publisher of the Weekly Gendai to pay 30 million yen (267,000 dollars) in damages and print an apology, the top Japanese government spokesman told a press conference.
Fukuda said the magazine "severely damaged the prime minister's honor and public trust by providing wrongful information that the prime minister had close exchanges with the person in the pictures."
The magazine, in its Monday edition, published an article and two photographs showing Mori sharing a meal with a man the magazine claims is an official of a violent right-wing organization. The man's identity is not given and his face is concealed in the pictures.
The magazine said the man is suspected of having close links with organized crime groups.
The weekly said the pictures were taken in Osaka, western Japan, around October 1998, when Mori was secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
Mori, who became Japan's prime minister in April, had denied having personal ties with the man and warned the Weekly Gendai through his lawyer that he would take legal action if an article incriminating him or suggesting that he had a special relationship with the man were published.
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