{"id":138307,"date":"2023-03-09T08:15:21","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T13:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=138307"},"modified":"2023-03-08T18:45:58","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T23:45:58","slug":"okinawa-governor-wants-sofa-amended-to-give-japan-the-lead-to-investigate-and-prosecute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=138307","title":{"rendered":"Okinawa governor wants SOFA amended to give Japan the lead to investigate and prosecute"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Ridge Alkonis, Navy Lieutenant, was sentenced to three years in in a Japanese prison for manslaughter. After returning with his family from Mount Fuji, he lost control of his vehicle and hit pedestrians. Two Japanese citizens died as a result of the collision. The U.S. tried to get him to be released to serve the balance of his sentence in the U.S., but to no avail. The governor of Okinawa believes that the Status of Forces Agreement should be amended to allow Japan to take the lead to investigate and prosecute crimes. The U.S. Military currently has first refusal rights.<\/p>\n

From the Military Times:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The current agreement allows the military justice system the right of first refusal for investigating and prosecuting U.S. troops who are suspected of committing off-base crimes in cases where the service member has violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Japanese law.<\/p>\n

But, the governor of Okinawa prefecture, which hosts 50,000 U.S. troops, believes the Japanese justice system deserves to take the lead.<\/p>\n

“We have been asking, or requesting, to amend the status of forces agreement to give the primary right to investigate to the Japanese side, when incidents or accidents takes place in Okinawa or in Japan, by amending the status of forces agreement,” Gov. Denny Tamaki, through an interpreter, said during a Defense Writers Group event on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The current agreement allows the military justice system the right of first refusal for investigating and prosecuting U.S. troops who are suspected of committing off-base crimes in cases where the service member has violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Japanese law.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government ceded its jurisdiction to Japan in Alkonis’s case. The officer lost control of his car and struck several pedestrians following a trip with his family to Mount Fuji in May 2021.<\/p>\n

The accident resulted in the deaths of two Japanese citizens. A Japanese court convicted him of negligent driving and sentenced him to three years in prison in October of that year, upholding that conviction after a July appeal hearing.<\/p>\n

But his family ? including his wife Brittany Alkonis, who attended the 2023 State of the Union address in February as a guest of Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark. ? has argued that the officer was suffering from delayed altitude sickness at the time of the accident and that the Japanese judge disregarded a doctor’s diagnosis in court.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Military Times has the rest of the story<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ridge Alkonis, Navy Lieutenant, was sentenced to three years in in a Japanese prison for manslaughter. … Okinawa governor wants SOFA amended to give Japan the lead to investigate and prosecute<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[387,84,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-affairs","category-military-issues","category-navy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}