Decision not to indict over Sri Lankan detainees death in Japan is unjust: panel

An independent judicial panel has ruled an earlier prosecutors’ decision not to indict officials at an immigration centre in Nagoya over the 2021 death of a Sri Lankan detainee is unjust, paving the way for the case to be reconsidered, it said Monday.  

In a decision dated Wednesday, the citizens who form the committee for the inquest of prosecution in Nagoya concluded the prosecutors should reconsider whether they can charge officials at Nagoya Regional Immigration Services Bureau, including the director at the time, for professional negligence resulting in the death of Sri Lankan woman Ratnayake Liyanage Wishma Sandamali.  

The committee noted that negligence could have been committed by officials that may link them to Wishma’s death, which occurred when she was 33.  

Officials should have been more aware of her critical situation by checking up on her health shortly before her death, and could have taken measures to save her, it said.  

The prosecutors’ previous interrogations of related parties in terms of the possibility of negligence were “insufficient,” the panel said.  

As for the allegation of murder and abandonment resulting in death, however, the committee determined that the officials did not willfully kill Wishma or purposely fail to protect the victim.  

“It is difficult” to say that the prosecutors’ investigations over the allegations were insufficient, the panel said, emphasizing that there is no evidence that would overturn the panel’s decision not to indict them on murder charges.