The Yokohama District Public Prosecutor's Office indicted a former U.S. serviceman Tuesday for smuggling drugs into Japan through the military mail service in 2004.
Jonathan Octavio Nunez, 31, was extradited from the United States last month in the first such case since a bilateral extradition treaty took effect in 1980. He will be subject to a lay judge trial.
Nunez stands accused of shipping approximately 50,000 tablets of synthetic drugs, including ecstasy, with a street value of around ¥200 million, from Canada to the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, in July 2004.
He left Japan for the United States the following month, and U.S. judicial authorities detained him in November 2010, at Tokyo's request.
Two accomplices, civilians working at the Yokosuka base, have already served sentences in Japan and returned to the United States.