Initial Detention
As is customary in Japan, following his arrest Nick Baker was detained for 23 days and questioned without access to a lawyer. Baker reported that he was interrogated by as many as six police officers at any one time, shackled to a chair, with his hands tied behind his back. Baker claimed that throughout this period the lights were kept on so he could not sleep and that he did not eat for 20 days. Baker denied that the suitcase was his and claimed that Prunier had tricked him into carrying it through customs. However, at the end of the detention period, he signed a statement in Japanese that during the trial was seen as inconsistent and self-incriminating. Baroness Sarah Ludford, a member of the European Parliament and justice spokeswoman for the United Kingdom's Liberal Democratic Party, criticized the quality of the Japanese-English interpretation during the interrogation, and noted that Baker was required to sign a witness statement in Japanese, a language he did not understand. Baker later claimed that the police had told him that if he signed a statement he would be incriminating Prunier and that he would be allowed to return home. Baker was indicted on May 1 for violation of the Narcotic and Psychotropic Drug Control Law, and Customs Law.
Baker's mother reported that his health had deteriorated during his detention including bleeding gums, a broken finger, daily headaches, severe depression, and extreme back pain caused by sitting on the concrete floor. Until the start of his trial ten months later, Baker was kept in solitary confinement for refusing to admit his guilt, and put on suicide watch because of depression.
Read more about this topic: Nicholas John Baker
Famous quotes containing the words initial and/or detention:
“For those parents from lower-class and minority communities ... [who] have had minimal experience in negotiating dominant, external institutions or have had negative and hostile contact with social service agencies, their initial approaches to the school are often overwhelming and difficult. Not only does the school feel like an alien environment with incomprehensible norms and structures, but the families often do not feel entitled to make demands or force disagreements.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“I would like you to understand completely, also emotionally, that I’m a political detainee and will be a political prisoner, that I have nothing now or in the future to be ashamed of in this situation. That, at bottom, I myself have in a certain sense asked for this detention and this sentence, because I’ve always refused to change my opinion, for which I would be willing to give my life and not just remain in prison. That therefore I can only be tranquil and content with myself.”
—Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937)