The Justice Ministry's International Affairs Department and other organizations are working hard to convince Japanese authorities to allow Yosef ben Ita Rivkoh, who was convicted of drug smuggling and failing to declare taxable items, to serve the sentence handed down to him last week by a Japanese court at a prison in Israel.
Over one year ago three Israeli yeshiva students were arrested for smuggling. They had naively agreed to take a package to Japan from an acquaintance that they trusted. The harsh sentence last week against the youngest of them, who was taken into custody while still a minor and whose trial was held first, shocked his family members and acquaintances.
According to an investigation by Yated Ne'eman, the judges were at first inclined to accept the prosecution's demand of ten years' incarceration, but instead decided that after five years' imprisonment a committee to be set up by the Japanese Prison Service or the Justice Ministry would decide whether to release him or extend his imprisonment until the end of an eight-year term.
The fact that the defendant was a minor at the time of his arrest had an impact on the court's ruling and its decision to subtract two-thirds of the 395 days he spent in custody pending trial against the new sentence. He was also fined $40,000.
The judges granted him two weeks to file an appeal over the severity of the sentence to the Japanese Supreme Court, but an appeal remains unlikely because it would have slim chances of success and the prolonged court proceedings would delay his transfer to an Israeli prison.
In recent years four Israelis have been transferred from Japanese prisons under the prison transfer agreement between the two countries. If the current efforts succeed besiyata deShmaya, based on good behavior the sentencing committee is likely to reduce his sentence by one-third.
The trial for the two other defendants is scheduled to begin next month. They are being represented by Atty. Mordechai Tzibin, who specializes in international incidents and defending Israelis abroad.
