Recently in Japan Category

As far as the Taliban is concerned, the Bamiyan Buddhas were worthless trash from the jahiliyya period of Afghanistan -- the time of pre-Islamic ignorance. "Japan offered to hide Bamiyan statues, but Taliban asked Japan to convert to Islam instead," from Japan Today, February 27 (thanks to Twostellas):

WASHINGTON -- Japan offered to hide Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddha statues to prevent the Taliban from destroying them, but the hardline regime instead suggested the Japanese convert to Islam, a new memoir says.

Abdul Salam Zaeef, who was Taliban-ruled Afghanistan's most public face as ambassador to Pakistan, wrote that Japan was the most active country in pressing the regime not to demolish the 1,500-year-old statues in 2001.

He said that an official delegation from Japan, along with a Buddhist group from Sri Lanka, offered to remove the statues piece by piece and reassemble them abroad.

"Another suggestion they had was that they cover the statues from head to toe in a way that no one would recognize they had ever been there, while preserving them underneath," Zaeef wrote in "My Life With The Taliban," just published in the United States.

He said that the Japanese told the Afghans that they were forefathers of their religion and should preserve its heritage, but Zaeef said Afghans considered Buddhism "a void religion."

"Since they saw us as their forefathers and had followed us before, why had they not followed our example when we found the true religion, I asked them," he wrote.

Defying the intense international appeals, the Taliban spent a month using first anti-aircraft guns and then dynamite to obliterate the Buddha statues, arguing that Islam forbade idolatry.

Zaeef said he believed that the destruction was within Islamic sharia law. But he wrote that the decision had "bad timing," as it worsened the Taliban's foreign relations....

Here's a strange one. Have you heard that the Japanese are looking for a couple of World War II soldiers, both in their mid- to late-eighties, who may still be alive and in the Philippines? Well, some reports have indicated that Islamic jihadists from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have the old men and are demanding that Japan play the dhimmi and pay for their ransom. Japanese officials deny this. From the Gulf Times, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

GENERAL SANTOS: A Japanese embassy official denied yesterday that guerrillas had demanded a ransom for two former World War II soldiers reported to be hiding near this southern Philippines city.

"We have no such information on guerrillas," the Japanese embassy's press attache, Shuhei Ogawa, told reporters when questioned about a report in a Tokyo newspaper.

Asked if any money had been requested in return for the two soldiers, Ogawa said, "No, nothing".

He was commenting after Mainichi Shimbun reported yesterday that Philippine rebels are demanding $232,000 ransom in exchange for "delivering" the two men to Japanese authorities.

Mainichi cited a Japanese businessman who reported their presence.
The newspaper did not say if the pair were being held against their will and did not identify the rebel group.

On Saturday Ogawa said Philippines national police had warned Japanese diplomats, who are in this Mindanao island city to try to confirm reports about the old soldiers, not to go into the mountains because of the rebel threat.

The area is home to both the communist New People's Army and the Muslim separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and other Muslim extremist groups. Muslim rebels are known to have conducted kidnappings for ransom.

But the MILF on Sunday said it had information on where the old soldiers were and offered to act as a go-between for the Japanese government.

"We would like to know what help the Japanese government want: Do they want us to assist in locating the men or assistance to bring them down from the mountains?" Eid Kabalu, MILF spokesman, told AFP in nearby Cotobato city where the MILF is holding a major conference on the future of peace talks with the Philippine government...

From the Dow Jones Newswire, :

NEW YORK - Japan's Foreign Ministry on Thursday warned Japanese citizens planning to visit Indonesia of potential terror threats during a three- day Easter holiday beginning Friday, the Kyodo news agency reports.

The ministry advised Japanese visitors to Indonesia to stay away from crowded places such as shopping malls and hotels frequented by Westerners which could become targets of terrorism, Kyodo said.

The move came after the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia issued a similar terror warning. The U.S. Embassy issued the warning after a group of suspected terrorists recently arrested in the Philippines included those with ties to Indonesia.

From Reuters, with thanks to Nicolei:

TOKYO: Japan is considering steps to allow authorities to fingerprint and photograph foreigners entering the country and to permit the deportation of suspected terrorists, a Japanese daily said yesterday.

The proposals were included in a draft outline of security measures expected to be adopted soon by a task force on international terrorism, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily said.

Yomiuri said the outline called for tightening security at Japanese diplomatic facilities and businesses overseas.

Proposed legal changes would permit authorities to fingerprint and photograph foreign travellers at airports and seaports, the paper said.

The legislative changes would be submitted to parliament in 2006 and it includes a provision that would allow suspected terrorists to be expelled.

The body has been identified as Shosei Koda. From The Scotsman, with thanks to Kemaste:

The Japanese government confirmed today that a decapitated body found in Iraq is that of a Japanese man taken hostage by Islamic militants earlier this week.

The body found in central Baghdad yesterday has been identified as Shosei Koda, 24, Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told reporters at an emergency news conference.

Japanese Embassy officials in Baghdad had sent fingerprints of the body to the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo, and police experts had positively identified the body, Machimura said.

Islamic guerrillas had threatened on Tuesday to behead Koda within 48 hours unless Japan pulled its troops out of Iraq. Tokyo immediately refused, and the deadline passed with no word of Koda's fate. The group has not yet made a claim of responsibility.

Iraqi officials found Koda's decapitated body in Baghdad on Saturday. Associated Press Television News videotape showed the severed head with the hostage's long black hair and features.

So who is it? From AP:

TOKYO - The Japanese government is "almost certain" a body earlier believed to belong to a Japanese hostage held in Iraq is not that of the captive, officials said Saturday.

The government had said a body found in central Iraq resembled that of hostage Shosei Koda, 24, and that it was being sent to medical experts for identification.

A Japanese doctor and officials in Kuwait examined it but found the body's characteristics differed from Koda's, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda.

"It is almost certain the body is not Mr. Koda," Hosoda said. "We are now collecting more information and turning our full efforts toward rescuing Mr. Koda."

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima told a news conference there were several discrepancies, including that the body was dressed in Middle Eastern clothing; the face, though mutilated, had traces of a beard; and the person seemed to be about 50 years old, was overweight, and had a different dental structure.

The discovery came a day after a deadline set by militants who threatened to behead Koda unless Japan withdrew its forces from Iraq -- a demand Japan rejected.

The latest from AP:

TOKYO - A Japanese civilian taken hostage in Iraq by militants has been killed, Kyodo News agency reported Saturday, citing a member of Japan's ruling party. But national broadcaster NHK said the government was still trying to confirm the information.

Government officials could not be reached early Saturday to comment on the report.

Islamic militants threatened on Tuesday to behead hostage 24-year-old Shosei Koda within 48 hours unless Japan withdrew its troops from Iraq. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi firmly rejected that demand, saying he would not give in to terrorists.

Kyodo said a body found near the city of Tikrit had been identified as Koda.

However, the Iraqi Interior Ministry had dismissed an earlier report that the body of an Asian man was found near Tikrit. The ministry said the body was that of an Iraqi man.

It was unclear whether the new Kyodo report referred to a new identification of the same body or a second body found in Tikrit.

A refreshingly insightful look at suicide bombers -- from a Japanese former kamikaze pilot. From the LA Times, with thanks to Anthony:

The survivors bitterly resent the world's appropriation of the term "kamikaze" -- meaning "divine wind" and originally coined to describe the unexpected typhoons that saved 13th century Japan from invading Mongol ships -- as shorthand for suicide bombers of every stripe.

There are the "Al Qaeda kamikazes" who flew passenger planes into office towers, "Palestinian kamikazes" who blow up pizza parlors filled with teenagers in Jerusalem, and "female Chechen kamikazes" willing to detonate explosive girdles in the middle of school gymnasiums crammed with children.

Japan's originals are insulted to be mentioned in the same breath.

"When I hear the comparison, I feel so sorry for my friends who died, because our mission was totally different from suicide bombers," Hamazono says as he strolls through the Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots in Chiran, a former air base on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu.

The kamikazes attacked military targets. In contrast, "the main purpose of a suicide bomber is to kill as many innocent civilians as they can," Hamazono says. That, he says, "is just murder."

The same distinction is made by other survivors of the Tokkotai, or Special Attack Force, conventionally known as the kamikaze. Its survivors tick off the reasons their goal-line stand against an American invasion was different from the blind lashing-out of suicide bombers today:

• They were ready to die out of love for their country, they say; suicide bombers are driven by hatred and revenge.

• The Shinto religion offers no reward of life after death. Islamic suicide bombers are promised a place in an afterlife.

• They were volunteers, motivated solely by patriotism. Suicide bombers often are recruited by militia leaders who offer money to their families.

Yet the arguments can't prevent those who use suicide tactics today from claiming Japanese kamikazes as an inspiration.

Naoto Amaki, Japan's former ambassador to Lebanon, recalled delivering a polite lecture to Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Shiite Islamist militia Hezbollah, in 2001. Amaki said he told Nasrallah that Japan's experience was a lesson in the ultimate futility of violence.

Not so, replied the sheik.

"He told me: 'We learned how to do suicide missions from the kamikazes,' " Amaki recalled. "Nasrallah said the Shiites all commend the Japanese samurai spirit."

Amaki says the analogy is faulty. "We Japanese are not a religious people; we just obey instructions. But the Arab world is looking for support wherever they can get it, so they seek out every excuse to legitimize their actions."

And kamikaze survivors resent it.

"We did what we did for military purposes," says Takeo Tagata, 88, a kamikaze instructor who was ordered to fly a mission the day before Japan surrendered. "No matter what supreme ideas they talk about, suicide bombers are just killing innocent civilians, people who don't have anything to do with their war."

Even though it only had 51 troops in Iraq, the Philippines has dealt the coalition and the free world a major blow by caving in to terrorist demands and withdrawing them. Not only will they not bring peace to the Philippines or the Middle East, but many more people will be murdered by the terrorists. After all, they have seen that it works. From AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - New online statements by purported militants threatened attacks against three U.S. allies -- Poland, Japan and Bulgaria -- if they don't pull their troops from Iraq, a day after a Filipino hostage was released because the Philippines bowed to insurgents' demands and withdrew its tiny contingent....

The new threats against Poland, Japan and Bulgaria were worrying signs that militants may be emboldened by their success against the Philippines. The United States and other coalition allies had criticized the government for agreeing to withdraw its 51-member contingent to save the life of truck driver Angelo dela Cruz, who was kidnapped two weeks ago.

The same group that kidnapped dela Cruz, the Khaled bin al-Waleed Corps, took aim at Japan. The group is the military wing of Tawhid and Jihad, the group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"To the government of Japan: Do what the Philippines has done. By God, nobody will protect you and we are not going to tolerate anybody," said a statement signed by the group. "Lines of cars laden with explosives are awaiting you; we will not stop, God willing."

A Foreign Ministry official in Japan said Wednesday that Tokyo would not pull its 500 troops, sent here for medical and reconstruction duty. Japan refused in April to withdraw after three Japanese were kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents. They were released unharmed....

The veracity of the latest statement could not be determined. A new statement signed Tawhid and Jihad on Wednesday cautioned readers to trust only statements posted on the group's behalf by Abu-Maysara al-Iraqi, the pen name of a frequent contributor to sites known for militant Muslim content. The threat against Japan was not posted by Abu-Maysara al-Iraqi.

While Tawhid and Jihad -- a name referring to the central Islamic tenet of monotheism and to holy war -- has claimed many attacks, it rarely issues threats or warnings. It earlier claimed responsibility for beheading U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg and South Korean translator Kim Sun-il.

An online statement from a previously unknown group that identified itself as al-Qaida's European branch contained threats to carry out deadly attacks in Bulgaria and Poland if the two countries don't withdraw their troops from Iraq.

The statement, signed by the Tawhid Islamic Group, appeared Wednesday on an Islamic Web site known as a clearing house for al-Qaida and groups linked to the terror network. The group identified itself as "al-Qaida in Europe." The authenticity of the statement and the group could not be verified.

The group said Bulgaria and Poland will "pay the price" just like the United States and Spain did, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington and deadly explosions on trains in Madrid in March.

"To the crusader Bulgarian government which is allying itself with the Americans and to the Bulgarian people we demand, for the last time, that you withdraw Bulgarian troops out of Iraq or we swear we will turn Bulgaria into pools of blood if you don't comply," said the statement.

Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov said Friday he won't pull out Bulgaria's 480-strong infantry battalion from Iraq. Last week militants threatened to kill two Bulgarian truck drivers in Iraq, while the fate of the second hostage remained unclear.

The group's statement also had a warning to Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka: "Pull your troops out of Iraq or you will hear the sounds of explosions that will hit your country, at the time we choose."...

On Wednesday, Deputy Defense Minister Janusz Zemke said withdrawing troops from Iraq would be a "terrible mistake" that would only encourage terrorism.

I'm glad somebody realizes that. It's too bad Janusz Zemke doesn't work in Manila.

First the truce offer, and now this. The mujahedin seem to be feeling weak today.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Three Japanese hostages who had been threatened with death unless Tokyo withdrew its troops from Iraq were released Thursday, a day after militants executed an Italian captive.

The two aid workers and one journalist were released to a group of Islamic clerics that helped end the crisis after about a week in captivity, according to video from Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera. A Japanese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Tokyo said the three were unharmed.

Al-Jazeera showed aid worker Nahoko Takato weeping into her hands. Noriaki Imai, another aid worker, shook hands with one of the organization's members, while photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama was nearby in the Baghdad office.

In Tokyo, the freed hostages' families danced, hugged and cried with joy. Imai's father, Takashi, sunk to his knees, leaving the boy's brother to speak to an interviewer: "We just want to thank everyone who made this possible," said Yosuku Imai.

The weeklong crisis tested Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's commitment to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. He had refused the captors' demands to withdraw a contingent of troops helping with reconstruction.

Two other Japanese civilians - a freelance journalists and a civic group activist - have been reported seized, according to an e-mail received from "Iraqi sources" by the Japan Visual Journalist Association. Japan said Wednesday it was investigating the report.

The joy over the release of the Japanese also was tempered by shock in Italy after captors killed Italian security guard Fabrizio Quattrocchi. He was the first known killing among nearly two dozen foreigners being held in Iraq.

The militants who killed Quattrocchi demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and threatened to kill three Italians, Al-Jazeera reported.

"The barbarian killing ... strengthens Italy's determination to bar hatred's way and work for the real fulfillment of peaceful coexistence in Iraq," Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi said in a statement.

The death could further heighten fears among international aid workers, contractors and journalists, some of whom are already restricting their activities or leaving the country. An Associated Press count listed 19 current captives.

American experts, meanwhile, were conducting tests to determine whether four bodies discovered west of Baghdad are the remains of private U.S. contractors missing since an assault on their convoy Friday.

One of the missing - Thomas Hamill, a 43-year-old truck driver from Macon, Miss., - is known to have been abducted. His captors have threatened to kill and mutilate him unless U.S. troops ended their assault on Fallujah. The deadline passed Sunday with no word on his fate.

Japanese TV reporting on the hostage crisis (AFP)

From The Australian, with thanks to Nicolei:

IRAQI insurgents late last night reneged on an agreement to free three Japanese civilian hostages, threatening to start killing them today unless Japan withdraws its troops.

The threat to kill the first of the hostages within 24 hours was delivered through an Iraqi mediator and followed hours of conflicting reports about the release of the photographer and two volunteer workers.

The captors were "giving the Japanese Government a 24-hour ultimatum, not open to extension, after which they will execute a first," Mezher al-Delaimi told Al-Jazeera TV.

"The death sentence will be applied to the others 12 hours later" unless Tokyo pulled its troops out of Iraq.

They had been expected to be freed at about 1pm AEST yesterday, after the withdrawal of earlier threats that they would be burnt alive if Japan did not pull out of the coalition force in Iraq.

The kidnappers, who identified themselves as the "Mujaheddin Squadron", had said they had been convinced by Sunni clerics to release their captives unharmed. Angry demonstrations took place outside Japan's parliament yesterday, demanding that the kidnappers' demands be met.

The fate of US security guard Thomas Hamill, 43, was also unclear, after his captors promised he would meet a worse fate than the four American civilians killed in Fallujah on March 31, whose bodies were burned and mutilated by a mob, unless US forces ended their assault on the city "within 12 hours".

That deadline passed shortly before a fragile ceasefire in the city was called last night in the tinderbox city west of Baghdad. Shortly after the US-brokered 12-hour pause took effect in Fallujah, however, an Apache attack helicopter was shot down and its two-man crew killed in Baghdad, two US Marines were wounded by snipers and an armed Iraqi was shot dead.

Two bloodied bodies shown on Al-Jazeera lying by a road, surrounded by Iraqis, were said to be those of murdered Americans.

A group calling itself the "Martyr Ahmed Yassin Brigades" claimed to have captured 30 hostages in Ramadi, west of Fallujah.

The statement, aired on Al-Arabiya television, showed no images of captives and there was no way to verify the group's claim to be holding "Japanese, Bulgarians, Americans, Israelis, Spanish and Koreans, a total of 30 individuals".

"If the siege of Fallujah is not lifted, we will cut off their heads," says a masked man on the videotape. He also says his fighters killed four American soldiers and "we have their bodies".

The tape shows an image of a body with bloodied khaki pants partially covered by a blanket.

Two members of Germany's crack GSG-9 security police were missing, presumed dead, after being caught in a firefight near Fallujah last week.

Defence Minister Robert Hill acknowledged the "dangerous" situation in Iraq, saying he was surprised at how bad things were a year after Saddam Hussein's fall. "I didn't think it would be as bad as this," Senator Hill told the Nine Network. "I thought that by now there would be an Iraqi leadership coming forward and Iraqi people taking greater control over a destiny that would have been a better destiny for themselves."

They were planning to strike at the World Cup 2002. From AP:

A senior al Qaeda member told U.S. authorities the group had plans to carry out attacks in Japan during the 2002 World Cup soccer tournament, local media reported yesterday.

U.S. authorities advised Japan of the information, which is believed to have come from the militant Islamic group's third-ranking official, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the daily Sankei newspaper reported, citing anonymous sources. The Kyodo news agency carried a similar report.

The attacks were not carried out because al Qaeda did not have a network in Japan, which hosted the 2002 event jointly with South Korea, according to the paper.

The report said Mohammed was familiar with Japan. During a three-month stay in 1987, he reportedly studied rock-drilling machinery.