Japanese Actress Ryoko Yonekura Not Indicted over Drug Case

Tokyo, Jan. 31 (Jiji Press)--Public prosecutors have stopped short of indicting Japanese actress Ryoko Yonekura over a suspected illegal drug case.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office announced the move Friday while withholding the reason for the decision not to indict the 50-year-old celebrity.

Papers on Yonekura for her suspected involvement in a banned drug in violation of the narcotics control law had been sent to prosecutors.

According to sources including the prosecutors office, the drug control division of the Kanto-Shinetsu Regional Bureau of Health and Welfare raided Yonekura's house in Tokyo in August last year for her alleged joint possession of an illegal drug with a male Argentine acquaintance.

In a statement posted on the website of her office last December, Yonekura said it was true that her house was searched by law-enforcement authorities, and that she, after consultations with lawyers, had refrained from releasing information about the matter from the perspective of fully cooperating in the investigation.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]