BEIJING – China on Friday called “illegal” the decision of a Japanese judicial panel to indict the captain of a Chinese trawler involved in a run-in last September with two Japanese patrol vessels trying to shoo it away from the Tokyo-administered Senkaku Islands.
“Any Japanese legal procedure against a Chinese national is illegal and void,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoshu said in a statement, a day after a judicial panel of citizens in Japan voted for the mandatory indictment of Zhan Qixiong, the Chinese skipper, who was briefly arrested and later freed.
Prosecutors had decided not to bring criminal charges against Zhan, 42, in connection with the run-in, which involved collisions, near the uninhabited islets in the East China Sea.