Russia Detains Japanese Journalist for Alleged Espionage

Tokyo, Oct. 13 (Jiji Press)--Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, said Tuesday that it has detained a male reporter for Hokkaido Shimbun Press, a newspaper publisher in the northernmost Japan prefecture of Hokkaido, on suspicion of espionage.

The FSB claims that he was gathering information on mobilized soldiers and others at the direction of a Japanese intelligence agency.

The reporter, a Japanese national, was transferred to Moscow, where a court ordered him held for two months, according to Russia's Interfax news agency.

According to the FSB, the reporter collected and stored information on the number of mobilized soldiers and volunteer fighters who went to the front for the invasion of Ukraine from the Kuril Islands, or the Chishima Islands off Hokkaido plus four Russian-controlled northwestern Pacific islands claimed by Japan.

He was detained in Sakhalin in Russia's Far East as he was preparing to leave the country.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]